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Cfwreuter* 



OF 

SHAKESPEARE PLAYS. 



BY WILLIAM HAZLITT. 



LONDON: 

Printed by C. H. Reynell, 21, Piccadilly, 
FOR R. HUNTER, SUCCESSOR TO MR. JOHNSON, 

IN ST. PAUL'S CHURCH-YARD} 

AND C. AND J. OLLIER, 

WELBECK-STREET, CAVENDISH -SQUARE. 

1817- 



T" 









TO 

CHARLES LAMB, Esq. 

THIS VOLUME IS INSCRIBED, AS A MARK OF 

OLD FRIENDSHIP 

AND LASTING ESTEEM, 

BY THE AUTHOR. 



CONTENTS. 



PREFACE - - - - . - - - . - vii 

CYMBELINE 1 

MACBETH -, . . . | 15 

JULIUS CAESAR ---*---.-- 33 

OTHELLO - - 42 

TIMON OF ATHENS - 61 

CORIOLANUS - G9 

TROILUS AND CRESSIDA - - - - - - 83 

ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA 95 

CAMLET ........... 103/ 

-.THE TEMPEST - 115 

^ THE MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM - - - - 126 

ROMEO AND JULIET ....... 135 

LEAR -_.„-. 153 

^RICHARD II. .---..... 178 

^VHENRY IV. Part I. and II. '.*^fc - r - ' ..- - - c 188 

HENRY V. --.,,..,.-- -203 

^ HENRY VI. in Three Parts - 215 

^ RICHARD TIL 226 

HENRY VIII. , . .237 

KING JOHN - - ** 243 

TWELFTH NIGHT ; or, WHAT YOU WILL - - - 255 

^THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA .... 265 

THE MERCHANT OF VENICE - - - - - - 269 

THE WINTER'S TALE - 278 

ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL - - - . - 287 

LOVE'S LABOUR LOST -_..... 2 93 

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING - - - - - 298 

AS YOU LIKE IT 305 

THE TAMING OF THE SHREW 312 

MEASURE FOR MEASURE - - - - - - 320 

THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR - - - -327 

THE COMEDY OF ERRORS 331 

DOUBTFUL PLAYS OF SHAKESPEAR - - . - 335 

POEMS AND SONNETS 316 



ERRATA. 



Page 
21, /. 13— /or " and who" read " who." 

66, I. 23— for " manners" read " marrows." 

92, Z. 12— /or " what was coming" read " what is coming. 

203, I. 5— for « himself" read " him." 



PREFACE. 



It is observed by Mr. Pope, that " If ever 
any author deserved the name of an original, 
it was Shakespear. Homer himself drew not 
his art so immediately from the fountains of 
nature ; it proceeded through ^Egyptian strain- 
ers and channels, and came to him not with- 
out some tincture of the learning, or some 
cast of the models, of those before him. The 
poetry of Shakespear was inspiration indeed: he 
is not so much an imitator, as an instrument of 
nature; and it is not so just to say that he 
speaks from her, as that she speaks through him. 
" His characters are so much nature herself, 
that it is a sort of injury to call them by so dis- 
tant a name as copies of her. Those of other 
poets have a constant resemblance, which shews 
that they received them from one another, and 
were but multipliers of the same image : each 



viii PREFACE. 

picture, like a mock-rainbow, is but the reflec- 
tion of a reflection. But ej^rjr_^ijJje^Jb^iracter 
inJShakespear, is as much an individual, as those 
in li£aitsej£^it is as impossible to find any two 
alike ; and such, as from their relation or affi- 
nity in any respect appear most to be twins, 
will, upon comparison, be found remarkably 
distinct. To this life and variety of character, 
we must add the wonderful preservation of it ; 
which is such throughout his plays, that had all 
the speeches been printed without the very 
names of the persons, I believe one might have 
applied them with certainty to every speaker." 
The object of the volume here offered to the 
public, is to illustrate these remarks in a more 
particular manner by a reference to each play. 
A gentleman of the name of Mason, the au- 
thor of a Treatise on Ornamental Gardening, 
(not Mason the poet) began a work of a similar 
kind about forty years ago, but he only lived to 
finish a parallel between the characters of Mac- 
beth and Richard III. which is an exceedingly 
ingenious piece of analytical criticism. Rich- 
ardson's Essays include but a few of Shake- 
spear's principal characters. The only work 
which seemed to supersede the necessity of an 
attempt like the present was SchlegePs very 
admirable Lectures on the Drama, which give 
by far the best account of the plays of Shake- 
spear that has hitherto appeared. The only 



PREFACE. ix 

circumstances in which it was thought not im- 
possible to improve on the manner in which the 
German critic has executed this part of his de- 
sign, were in avoiding an appearance of mysti- 
cism in his style, not very attractive to the 
English reader, and in bringing illustrations from 
particular passages of the plays themselves, of 
which Schlegel's work, from the extensiveness 
of his plan, did not admit. We will at the same 
time confess, that some little jealousy of the 
character of the national understanding was not 
without its share in producing the following 
undertaking, for " we were piqued" that it 
should be reserved for a foreign critic to give 
ic reasons for the faith which we English have 
in Shakespear." Certainly, no writer among 
ourselves has shewn either the same enthusias- 
tic admiration of his genius, or the same philo- 
sophical acuteness in pointing out his charac- 
teristic excellences. As we have pretty well 
exhausted all we had to say upon this subject 
in the body of the work, we shall here transcribe 
Schlegel's general account of Shakespear, which 
is in the following words:— * 

" Never, perhaps, was there so comprehensive 
a talent for the delineation of character as Shake- 
spear's. It riot only' grasps the diversities of 
rank, sex, and age, down to the dawnings of 
infancy; not only do the king and -the beggar, 



x PREFACE. 

the hero and the pickpocket, the sage and the 
idiot speak and act with equal truth; not only 
does he transport himself to distant ages and 
foreign nations, and pourtray in the most accu- 
rate manner, with only a few apparent violations 
of costume, the spirit of the ancient Romans, of 
the French in their wars with the English, of 
the English themselves during a great part of 
their history, of the Southern Europeans (in 
the serious part of many comedies) the culti- 
vated society of that time, and the former rude 
and barbarous state of the North ; his human 
characters have not only such depth and pre- 
cision that they cannot be arranged under classes, 
and are inexhaustible, even in conception: — no 
— this Prometheus not merely forms men, he 
opens the gates of the magical world of spirits; 
calls up the midnight ghost ; exhibits before us 
his witches amidst their unhallowed mysteries; 
peoples the air with sportive fairies and sylphs : 
— and these beings, existing only in imagination, 
possess such truth and consistency, that even 
when deformed monsters like Caliban, he extorts 
the conviction, that if there should be such be- 
ings, they would so conduct themselves. In a 
word, as he carries with him the most fruitful 
and daring fancy into the kingdom of nature, — 
on the other hand, he carries nature into the re- 
gions of fancy, lying beyond the confines of real- 



PREFACE. xi 

ity. We are lost in astonishment at seeing the 
extraordinary, the wonderful, and the unheard 
of, in such intimate nearness. 

" If Shakespear deserves our admiration for 
his characters, he is equally deserving of it for 
his exhibition of passion, taking this word in its 
widest signification, as including every mental 
condition, every tone from indifference or fami- 
liar mirth to the wildest rage and despair. He 
gives us the history of minds ; he lays open to 
us, in a single word, a whole series of preceding 
conditions. His passions do not at first stand 
displayed to us in all their height, as is the case 
with so many tragic poets, who, in the language 
of Lessing, are thorough masters of the legal 
style of love. He paints in a most inimitable 
manner, the gradual progress from the first ori- 
gin. " He gives," as Lessing says, " a living 
picture of all the most minute and secret arti- 
fices by which a feeling steals into our souls; of 
all the imperceptible advantages which it there 
gains ; of all the stratagems by which every other 
passion is made subservient to it, till it becomes 
the sole tyrant of our desires and our aversions." 
Of all poets, perhaps, he alone has pourtrayed 
the mental diseases, melancholy, delirium, lu- 
nacy, with such inexpressible, and, in every re- 
spect, definite truth, that the physician may 
enrich his observations from them in the same 
manner as from real cases. 



xii PREFACE. 

" And yet Johnson has objected to Shake- 
spear, that his pathos is not always natural and 
free from affectation. There are, it is true, pas- 
sages, though, comparatively speaking, very few, 
where his poetry exceeds the bounds of true 
dialogue, where a too soaring imagination, a too 
luxuriant wit, rendered the complete dramatic 
forgetfulness of himself impossible. With this 
exception, the censure originates only in a fan- 
ciless way of thinking, to which every thing ap- 
pears unnatural that does not suit its own tame 
insipidity. Hence, an idea has been formed of 
simple and natural pathos, which consists in ex- 
clamations destitute of imagery, and nowise 
elevated above every-day life. But energetical 
passions electrify the whole of the mental 
powers, and will, consequently, in highly fa- 
voured natures, express themselves in an inge- 
nious and figurative manner. It has been often 
remarked, that indignation gives wit; and, as 
despair occasionally breaks out into laughter, it 
may sometimes also give vent to itself in anti- 
thetical comparisons. 

" Besides, the rights of the poetical form have 
not been duly weighed. Shakespear, who was 
always sure of his object, to move in a suffi- 
ciently powerful manner when he wished to do 
so, has occasionally, by indulging in a freer play, 
purposely moderated the impressions when too 
painful, and immediately introduced a musical 



PREFACE. xiii 

alleviation of our sympathy. He had not those 
rude ideas of his art which many moderns seem 
to have, as if the poet, like the clown in the pro- 
verb, must strike twice on the same place. An 
ancient rhetorician delivered a caution against 
dwelling too long on the excitation of pity ; for 
nothing, he said* dries so soon as tears; and 
Shakespear acted conformably to this ingenious 
maxim, without knowing it. 

" The objection* that Shakespear wounds our 
feelings by the open display of the most disgust- 
ing moral odiousness, harrows up the mind un- 
mercifully* and tortures even our senses by the 
exhibition of the most insupportable and hateful 
spectacles, is one of much greater importance. 
He has never, in fact, varnished over wild and 
blood-thirsty passions with a pleasing exterior, — 
never clothed crime and want of principle with 
a false show of greatness of soul ; and in that 
respect he is every way deserving of praise. 
Twice he has pourtrayed downright villains; and 
the masterly way in which he has contrived to 
elude impressions of too painful a nature, may 
be seen in Iago and Richard the Third. The 
constant reference to a petty and puny race must 
cripple the boldness of the poet. Fortunately 
for his art, Shakespear lived in an age extremely 
susceptible of noble and tender impressions, but 
which had still enough of the firmness inherited 
from a vigorous olden time, not to shrink back 



xiv PREFACE. 

with dismay from every strong and violent pic- 
ture. We have lived to see tragedies of which 
the catastrophe consists in the swoon of an ena- 
moured princess. If Shakespear falls occasion- 
ally into the opposite extreme, it is a noble er- 
ror, originating in the fulness of a gigantic 
strength : and yet this tragical Titan, who storms 
the heavens, and threatens to tear the world 
from off its hinges ; who, more terrible than 
jEschylus, makes our hair stand on end, and 
congeals our blood with horror, possessed, at the 
same time, the insinuating loveliness of the 
sweetest poetry. He plays with love like a 
child ; and his songs are breathed out like melt- 
ing sighs. He unites in his genius the utmost 
elevation and the utmost depth ; and the most 
foreign, and even apparently irreconcileable pro- 
perties subsist in him peaceably together. The 
world of spirits and nature have laid all their 
treasures at his feet. In strength a demi-god, 
in profundity of view a prophet, in all-seeing 
wisdom a protecting spirit of a higher order, he 
lowers himself to mortals, as if unconscious of 
his superiority : and is as open and unassuming 
as a child. 

" Shakespear's comic talent is equally won- 
derful with that which he has shown in the 
pathetic and tragic : it stands on an equal eleva- 
tion, and possesses equal extent and profundity. 
All that I before wished was, not to admit that 



PREFACE. xv 

the former preponderated. He is highly in- 
ventive in comic situations and motives. It will 
be hardly possible to show whence he has taken 
any of them ; whereas, in the serious part of his 
drama, he has generally laid hold of something 
already known. His comic characters are 
equally true, various, and profound, with his se- 
rious. So little is he disposed to caricature, that 
we may rather say many of his traits are almost 
too nice and delicate for the stage, that they can 
only be properly seized by a great actor, and 
fully understood by a very acute audience. Not 
only has he delineated many kinds of folly; he 
has also contrived to exhibit mere stupidity 
in a most diverting and entertaining manner." 
Vol. ii. p. 145. 

We have the rather availed ourselves of this 
testimony of a foreign critic in behalf of Shake- 
spear, because our own countryman, Dr. John- 
son, has not been so favourable to him. It may 
be said of Shakespear, that " those who are not 
for him are against him :" for indifference is here 
the height" of injustice. We may sometimes, in 
order " to do a great right, do a little wrong." 
An overstrained enthusiasm is more pardonable 
with respect to Shakespear than the want of it; 
for our admiration cannot easily surpass his 
genius. We have a high respect for Dr. John- 
son's character and understanding, mixed with 
something like personal attachment: but he was 



xvi PREFACE. 

neither a poet nor a judge of poetry. He might 
in one sense be a judge of poetry as it falls with- 
in the limits and rules of prose, but not as it is 
poetry. Least of all was he qualified to be a 
judge of Shakespear, who " alone is high fan- 
tastical." Let those who have a prejudice 
against Johnson read Boswell's Life of him: as 
those whom he has prejudiced against Shake- 
spear should read his Irene. We do not say 
that a man to be a critic must necessarily be a 
poet: but to be a good critic, he ought not to 
be a bad poet. Such poetry as a man delibe- 
rately writes, such, and such only will he like. 
Dr. Johnson's Preface to his edition of Shake- 
spear looks like a laborious attempt to bury the 
characteristic merits of his author under a load 
of cumbrous phraseology, and to weigh his excel- 
lences and defects in equal scales, stuffed full 
of " swelling figures and sonorous epithets." 
Nor could it well be otherwise ; Dr. John- 
son's general powers of reasoning overlaid his 
critical susceptibility. All his ideas were cast 
in a given mould, in a set form : they were 
made out by rule and system, by climax, in- 
ference, and antithesis : — Shakespear's were the 
reverse. Johnson's understanding dealt on^ 
ly in round numbers: the fractions were lost 
upon him. He reduced every thing to the 
common standard of conventional propriety; and 
the most exquisite refinement or sublimity pro- 



PREFACE. xvii 

duced an effect on his mind, only as they could 
be translated into the language of measured prose. 
To him an excess of beauty was a fault; for it 
appeared to him like an excrescence ; and his 
imagination was dazzled by the blaze of light. 
His writings neither shone with the beams of 
native genius, nor reflected them. The shift- 
ing shapes of fancy, the rainbow hues of things, 
made no impression on him : he seized only on 
the permanent and tangible. He had no idea 
of natural objects but " such as he could mea- 
sure with a two-foot rule, or tell upon ten fin- 
gers:" he judged of human nature in the same 
way, by mood and figure: he saw only the defi- 
nite, the positive, and the practical, the average 
forms of things, not their striking differences, 
their classes, not their degrees. He was a 
man of strong common sense and practical wis- 
dom, rather than of genius or feeling. He 
retained the regular, habitual impressions of 
actual objects, but he could not follow the rapid 
flights of fancy, or the strong movements of pas- 
sion. That is, he was to the poet what the 
painter of still life is to the painter of history. 
Common sense sympathizes with the impres- 
sions of things on ordinary minds in ordinary 
circumstances: genius catches the glancing com- 
binations presented to the eye of fancy, under 
the influence of passion. It is the province of 
the didactic reasoner to take cognizance of those 



xviii PREFACE. 

results of human nature which are constantly- 
repeated and always the same, which follow 
one another in regular succession, which are 
acted upon by large classes of men, and embodi- 
ed in received customs, laws, language, and in- 
stitutions ; and it was in arranging, comparing, 
and arguing on these kind of general results, that 
Johnson's excellence lay. But he could not 
quit his hold of the common-place and mechan- 
ical, and apply the general rule to the particular 
exception, or shew how the nature of man was 
modified by the workings of passion, or the 
infinite fluctuations of thought and accident. 
Hence he could judge neither of the heights nor 
depths of poetry. Nor is this all ; for being 
conscious of great powers in himself, and those 
powers of an adverse tendency to those of his 
author, he would be for setting up a foreign ju- 
risdiction over poetry, and making criticism a 
kind of Procrustes' bed of genius, where he 
might cut down imagination to matter-of-fact, 
regulate the passions according to reason, and 
translate the whole into logical diagrams and 
rhetorical declamation. Thus he says of Shake- 
spear's characters, in contradiction to what Pope 
had observed, and to what every one else feels, 
that each character is a species, instead of being 
an individual. He in fact found the general 
species or didactic form in Shakespear's charac- 
ters, which was all he sought or cared for ; he 



PREFACE. xix 

did not find the individual traits, or the dramatic 
distinctions which Shakespear has engrafted 
on this general nature, because he felt no in- 
terest in them. Shakespear's bold and happy 
flights of imagination were equally thrown away 
upon our author. He was not only without 
any particular fineness of organic sensibility, 
alive to all the " mighty world of ear and eye," 
which is necessary to the painter or musician, 
but without that intenseness of passion which, 
seeking to exaggerate whatever excites the feel- 
ings of pleasure or power in the mind, and 
moulding the impressions of natural objects ac- 
cording to the impulses of imagination, produces 
a genius and a taste for poetry. According to Dr. 
Johnson, a mountain is sublime, or a rose is 
beautiful ; for that their name and definition im- 
ply. But he would no more be able to give the 
description of Dover cliff in Lear, or the de- 
scription of flowers in The Winter's Tale, than 
to describe the objects of a sixth sense; nor 
do we think he would have any very profound 
feeling of the beauty of the passages here re- 
ferred to. A stately common-place, such as 
Congreve's description of a ruin in the Mourn- 
ing Bride, would have answered Johnson's pur- 
pose just as well, or better than the first ; and 
an indiscriminate profusion of scents and hues 
would have interfered less with the ordinary 



xx PREFACE. 

routine of his imagination than Perdita's lines, 
which seem enamoured of their own sweet- 
ness — ■ 

« Daffodils 

That come before the swallow dares, and take 
The winds of March with beauty j violets dim, 
But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes, 
Or Cytherea's breath." — 

No one who does not feel the passion which 
these objects inspire can go along with the ima- 
gination which seeks to express that passion and 
the uneasy sense of delight by something still 
more beautiful, and no one can feel this pas- 
sionate love of nature without quick natural 
sensibility. To a mere literal and formal ap- 
prehension, the inimitably characteristic epithet, 
" violets dim" must seem to imply a defect, 
rather than a beauty ; and to any one, not feel- 
ing the full force of that epithet, which suggests 
an image like " the sleepy eye of love," the al- 
lusion to " the lids of Juno's eyes" must appear 
extravagant and unmeaning. Shakespear's fancy 
lent words and images to the most refined 
sensibility to nature, struggling for expression : 
his descriptions are identical with the things 
themselves, seen through the fine medium of 
passion : strip them of that connection, and try 
them by ordinary conceptions and ordinary rules, 
and they are as grotesque and barbarous as 



PREFACE. xxi 

you please. — By thus lowering Shakespear's 
genius to the standard of common-place inven- 
tion, it was easy to shew that his faults were 
as great as his beauties: for the excellence, 
which consists merely in a conformity to rules, 
is counterbalanced by the technical violation of 
them. Another circumstance which led to Dr. 
Johnson's indiscriminate praise or censure of 
Shakespear, is the very structure of his style. 
Johnson wrote a kind of rhyming prose, in which 
he was compelled as much to finish the different 
clauses of his sentences, and to balance one pe- 
riod against another, as the writer of heroic verse 
is to keep to lines of ten syllables with similar 
terminations. He no sooner acknowledges the 
merits of his author in one line than the periodical 
revolution of his style carries the weight of his 
opinion completely over to the side of objection, 
thus keeping up a perpetual alternation of per- 
fections and absurdities. We do not otherwise 
know how to account for such assertions as the 
following : — " In his tragic scenes, there is al- 
ways something wanting, but his comedy often 
surpasses expectation or desire. His comedy 
pleases by the thoughts and the language, and 
his tragedy, for the greater part, by incident and 
action. His tragedy seems to be skill, his co- 
medy to be instinct." Yet after saying that 
" his tragedy was skill," he affirms in the next 



xxii PREFACE. 

page, " His declamations or set speeches are 
commonly cold and weak, for his power was the 
power of nature: when he endeavoured, like 
other tragic writers, to catch opportunities of 
amplification, and instead of inquiring what the 
occasion demanded, to shew how much his 
stores of knowledge could supply, he seldom 
escapes without the pity or resentment of his 
reader/" Poor Shakespear ! Between the 
charges here brought against him, of want of 
nature in the first instance, and of want of skill 
in the second, he could hardly escape being con- 
demned. And again, " But the admirers of this 
great poet have most reason to complain when 
he approaches nearest to his highest excellence, 
and seems fully resolved to sink them in dejec- 
tion, or mollify them with tender emotions by 
the fall of greatness, the danger of innocence, or 
the crosses of love. What he does best, he soon 
ceases to do. He no sooner begins to move 
than he counteracts himself; and terror and pity, 
as they are rising in the mind, are checked and 
blasted by sudden frigidity." In all this, our 
critic seems more bent on maintaining the equi- 
librium of his style than the consistency or truth 
of his opinions. — If Dr. Johnson's opinion was 
right, the following observations on Shakespear's 
Plays must be greatly exaggerated, if not ridi- 
culous. If he was wrong, what has been said 



PREFACE. xxiii 

may perhaps account for his being so, without 
detracting from his ability and judgment in other 
things. 

It is proper to add, that the account of the 
Midsummer Nighfs Dream has appeared in 
another work. 

April 15, 1817- 



CYMBELINE, 



CymbelIne is one of the most delightful of 
Shakespear's historical plays. It may be con- 
sidered as a dramatic romance, in which the 
most striking parts of the story are thrown into 
the form of a dialogue, and the intermediate 
circumstances are explained by the different 
speakers, as occasion renders it necessary. The 
action is less concentrated in consequence ; but 
the interest becomes more aerial and refined 
from the principle of perspective introduced into 
the subject by the imaginary changes of scene 
as well as by the length of time it occupies. The 
reading of this play is like going a journey with 
some uncertain object at the end of it, and in 
which the suspense is kept up and heightened by 
the long intervals between each action. Though 
the events are scattered over such an extent of 

B 



3 CYMBELINE. 

surface, and relate to such a variety of charac- 
ters, yet the links which bind the different in- 
terests of the story together are never entirely 
broken. The most straggling and seemingly 
casual incidents are contrived in such a man- 
ner as to lead at last to the most complete de- 
velopement of the catastrophe. The ease and 
conscious unconcern with which this is effected 
only makes the skill more wonderful. The bu- 
siness of the plot evidently thickens in the last 
act : the story moves forward with increasing 
rapidity at every step ; its various ramifications 
are drawn from the most distant points to the 
same centre; the principal characters are brought 
together, and placed in very critical situations; 
and the fate of almost every person in the drama 
is made to depend on the solution of a single 
circumstance — the answer of Iachimo to the 
question of Imogen respecting the obtaining of 
the ring from Posthumus. Dr. Johnson is of 
opinion that Shakespear was generally inatten- 
tive to the winding up of his plots. We think 
the contrary is true ; and we might cite in proof 
of this remark not only the present play, but 
the conclusion of Lear, of Romeo and Juliet, 
of Macbeth, of Othello, even of Hamlet, and of 
other plays of less moment, in which the last act 
is crowded with decisive events brought about 
by natural and striking means. 



CYMBELINE. 3 

The pathos in Cymbeline is not violent or 
tragical, but of the most pleasing and amiable 
kind. A certain tender gloom overspreads the 
whole. Posthumus is the ostensible hero of 
the piece, but its greatest charm is the cha- 
racter of Imogen. Posthumus is only interest- 
ing from the interest she takes in him, and she 
is only interesting herself from her tenderness 
and constancy to her husband. It is the pecu- 
liar characteristic of Shakespear's heroines, that 
they seem to exist only in their attachment to 
others. They are pure abstractions of the affec- 
tions. We think as little of their persons as 
they do themselves, because we are let into the 
secrets of their hearts, which are more important. 
We are too much interested in their affairs to 
stop to look at their faces, except by stealth and 
at intervals. No one ever hit the true perfec- 
tion of the female character, the sense of weak- 
ness leaning on the strength of its affections for 
support, so well as Shakespear — no one ever so 
well painted natural tenderness free from affec- 
tation and disguise — no one else ever so well 
shewed how delicacy and timidity, when driven 
to extremity, grow romantic and extravagant; 
for the romance of his heroines (in which they 
abound) is only an excess of the habitual pre- 
judices of their sex, scrupulous of being false 
to their vows, truant to their affections, and 
taught by the force of feeling when to forego 



4 CYMBELINE. 

the forms of propriety for the essence of it. His 
women were in this respect exquisite logicians ; 
for there is nothing so logical as passion. They 
knew their own minds exactly ; and only fol- 
lowed up a favourite idea,, which they had 
sworn to with their tongues, and which was 
engraven on their hearts, into its untoward con- 
sequences. They were the prettiest little set of 
martyrs and confessors on record. — Cibber, in 
speaking of the early English stage, accounts for 
the want of prominence and theatrical display 
in Shakespear's female characters from the cir- 
cumstance, that women in those days were not 
allowed to play the parts of women, which made 
it necessary to keep them a good deal in the 
back-ground. Does not this state of manners 
itself, which prevented their exhibiting them- 
selves in public, and confined them to the rela- 
tions and charities of domestic life, afford a truer 
explanation of the matter ? His women are 
certainly very unlike stage-heroines; the reverse 
of tragedy-queens. 

We have almost as great an affection for Imo- 
gen as she had for Posthumus ; and she deserves 
it better. Of all Shakespear's women she is 
perhaps the most tender and the most artless. 
Her incredulity in the opening scene with Iachi- 
mo, as to her husband's infidelity, is much the 
same as Desdemona's backwardness to believe 
Othello's jealousy. Her answer to the most 



CYMBELINE. 5 

distressing part of the picture is only, " My 
lord, I fear, has forgot Britain." Her readiness 
to pardon Iachimo's false imputations and his 
designs against herself, is a good lesson to 
prudes ; and may shew that where there is a 
real attachment to virtue, it has no need to 
bolster itself up with an outrageous or affected 
antipathy to vice. The scene in which Pisanio 
gives Imogen his master's letter, accusing her of 
incontinency on the treacherous suggestions of 
Iachimo, is as touching as it is possible for any 
thing to be: — 

" Pisanio. What cheer, Madam ? 

Imogen. False to his bed ! What is it to be false ? 
To lie in watch there, and to think on him ? 
To weep 'twixt clock and clock ? If sleep charge nature, 
To break it with a fearful dream of him, 
And cry myself awake ? That's false to's bed, is it ? 

Pisanio. Alas, good lady ! 

Imogen. I false ? thy conscience witness, Iachimo, 
Thou didst accuse him of incontinency, 
Thou then look'dst like a villain : now methinks, 
Thy favour's good enough. Some Jay of Italy, 
Whose mother was her painting, hath betrayed him : 
Poor I am stale, a garment out of fashion, 
And for I am richer than to hang by th' walls, 
I must be ript ; to pieces with me. Oh, 
Men's vows are women's traitors. All good seeming 
By thy revolt, oh husband, shall be thought 
Put on for villainy : not born where' t grows, 
But worn a bait for ladies. 

Pisanio. Good Madam,, hear me-— 



6 CYMBEMNE. 

Imogen. Talk thy tongue weary, speak ; 
I have heard I am a strumpet, and mine ear, 
Therein false struck, can take no greater wound, 
Nor tent to bottom that." 

When Pisanio, who had been charged to kill 
his mistress, puts her in a way to live, she says, 

tc Why, good fellow, 
What shall I do the while ? Where bide ? How live ? 
Or in my life what comfort, when I am 
Dead to my husband ?" 

Yet when he advises her to disguise herself 
in boy's clothes, and suggests " a course pretty 
and full in view/' by which she may " happily 
be near the residence of Posthumus," she ex- 
claims, 

" Oh, for such means, 
Though peril to my modesty, not death on't, 
I would adventure." 

And when Pisanio, enlarging on the conse- 
quences, tells her she must change 



Fear and niceness, 



The handmaids of all women, or more truly, 
Woman its pretty self, into a waggish courage, 
Ready in gibes, quick answer'd, saucy, and 
As quarrellous as the weazel" — 

she interrupts him hastily : — 

" Nay, be brief 5 
I see into thy end, and am almost 
A man already." 



CYMBELINE. 



In her journey thus disguised to Milford- 
Haven, she loses her guide and her way ; and 
unbosoming her complaints, says beautifully, — 

. " My dear Lord, 



Thou art one of the false ones -, now I think on thee, 
My hunger's gone ; but even before, I was 
At point to sink for food." 

She afterwards finds, as she thinks, the dead 
body of Posthumus, and engages herself as a 
footboy to serve a Roman officer, when she has 
done all due obsequies to him whom she calls 
her former master 

(C And when 



With wild wood-leaves and weeds I ha' strew' d his grave, 

And on it said a century of pray'rs, 

Such as I can, twice o'er, I'll weep and sigh, 

And leaving so his service, follow you, 

So please you entertain me." 

Now this is the very religion of love. She all 
along relies little on her personal charms, which 
she fears may have been eclipsed by some painted 
Jay of Italy ; she relies on her merit, and her 
merit is in the depth of her love, her truth and 
constancy. Our admiration of her beauty is 
excited with as little consciousness as possible 
on her part. There are two delicious descrip- 
tions given of her, one when she is asleep, and 
one when she is supposed dead. Arviragus 
thus addresses her — 



CYMBELINE. 



With fairest flowers, 



While summer lasts, and I live here, Fidele, 
I'll sweeten thy sad grave ; thou shalt not lack 
The flow'r that's like thy face, pale primrose, nor 
The azur'd hare-bell, like thy veins, no, nor 
The leaf of eglantine, which not to slander, 
Out-sweeten' d not thy breath.' ■ 

The yellow Iachimo gives another thus, when 
he steals into her bed-chamber: — 



Cytherea, 



How bravely thou becom'st thy bed ! Fresh lity, 
And whiter than the sheets ! That I might touch — ■ 
But kiss, one kiss — 'Tis her breathing that 
Perfumes the chamber thus : the flame o' th' taper 
Bows toward her, and would under- peep her lids 
To see th' enclosed lights now canopied 
Under the windows, white and azure, laced 
With blue of Heav'ns own tinct — on her left breast 
A mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops 
I' the bottom of a cowslip." 

There is a moral sense in the proud beauty of 
this last image, a rich surfeit of the fancy,— as 
that well-known passage beginning, " Me of my 
lawful pleasure she restrained, and prayed me 
oft forbearance," sets a keener edge upon it by 
the inimitable picture of modesty and self-de- 
nial. 

The character of Cloten, the conceited, booby 
lord, and rejected lover of Imogen, though not 
very agreeable in itself, and at present obsolete, 
is drawn with great humour and knowledge of 



CYMBELINE. 9 

character. The description which Imogen gives 
of his unwelcome addresses to her — " Whose 
love-suit hath been to me as fearful as a siege" — 
is enough to cure the most ridiculous lover of 
his folly. It is remarkable that though Cloten 
makes so poor a figure in love, he is described 
as assuming an air of consequence as the Queen^s 
son in a council of state, and with all the absur- 
dity of his person and manners, is not without 
shrewdness in his observations. So true is it 
that folly is as often owing to a want of proper 
sentiments as to a want of understanding ! The 
exclamation of the ancient critic, Oh Menander 
and Nature, which of you copied from the 
other ! would not be misapplied to Shakespear. 
The other characters in this play are repre- 
sented with great truth and accuracy, and as it 
happens in most of the author's works, there is 
not only the utmost keeping in each separate 
character ; but in the casting of the different 
parts, and their relation to one another, there 
is an affinity and harmony, like what we may 
observe in the gradations of colour in a picture. 
The striking and powerful contrasts in which 
Shakespear abounds could not escape observa- 
tion ; but the use he makes of the principle of 
analogy to reconcile the greatest diversities of 
character and to maintain a continuity of feeling 
throughout, has not been sufficiently attended 
to. In Cymbeline, for instance, the principal 



10 CYMBELINE. 

interest arises out of the unalterable fidelity of 
Imogen to her husband under the most trying 
circumstances. Now the other parts of the pic- 
ture are filled up with subordinate examples of 
the same feeling, variously modified by dif- 
ferent situations, and applied to the purposes of 
virtue or vice. The plot is aided by the amor- 
ous importunities of Cloten, by the tragical 
determination of Iachimo to conceal the defeat 
of his project by a daring imposture : the faith- 
ful attachment of Pisanio to his mistress is an 
affecting accompaniment to the whole ; the 
obstinate adherence to his purpose in Bellarius, 
who keeps the fate of the young princes so long 
a secret in resentment for the ungrateful return 
to his former services, the incorrigible wicked- 
ness of the Queen, and even the blind uxorious 
confidence of Cymbeline, are all so many lines 
of the same story, tending to the same point. 
The effect of this coincidence is rather felt than 
observed ; and as the impression exists uncon- 
sciously in the mind of the reader, so it probably 
arose in the same manner in the mind of the 
author, not from design, but from the force of 
natural association, a particular train of feeling 
suggesting different inflections of the same pre- 
dominant, principle, melting into, and strength- 
ening one another, like chords in music. 

The characters of Bellarius, Guiderius, and 
Arviragus, and the romantic scenes in which 



CYMBELINE. 11 

they appear, are a fine relief to the intrigues and 
artificial refinements of the court from which* 
they are banished. Nothing can surpass the 
wildness and simplicity of the descriptions of 
the mountain life they lead. They follow the 
business of huntsmen, not of shepherds ; and 
this is in keeping with the spirit of adventure 
and uncertainty in the rest of the story, and with 
the scenes in which they are afterwards called 
on to act. How admirably the youthful fire and 
impatience to emerge from their obscurity in 
the young princes is opposed to the cooler cal- 
culations and prudent resignation of their more 
experienced counsellor ! How well the dis- 
advantages of knowledge and of ignorance, of so- 
litude and society, are placed against each other! 

" Guiderius. Out of your proof you speak : we poor 
unfledg'd 
Have never wing'd from view o' th' nest ; nor know not 
What air's from home. Haply this life is best, 
If quiet life is best 3 sweeter to you 
That have a sharper known ; well corresponding 
With your stiff age : but unto us it is 
A cell of ignorance j travelling a-bed, 
A prison for a debtor, that not dares 
To stride a limit. 

Arviragus. What should we speak of 
When we are old as you ? When we shall hear 
The rain and wind beat dark December ! How, 
In this our pinching cave, shall we discourse 
The freezing hours away ? We have seen nothing. 



12 CYMBELINE. 

We are beastly ; subtle as the fox for prey, 
Like warlike as the wolf for what we eat : 
Our valour is to chase what flies -, our cage 
We make a quire, as doth the prison'd bird. 
And sing our bondage freely." 

The answer of Bellarius to this expostulation 
is hardly satisfactory ; for nothing can be an an- 
swer to hope, or the passion of the mind for 
unknown good, but experience. — The forest of 
Arden in As you like it can alone compare with 
the mountain scenes in Cymbeline : yet how 
different the contemplative quiet of the one from 
the enterprising boldness and precarious mode of 
subsistence in the other! Shakespear not only 
lets us into the minds of his characters, but 
gives a tone and colour to the scenes he de- 
scribes from the feelings of their imaginary in- 
habitants. He at the same time preserves the 
utmost propriety of action and passion, and gives 
all their local accompaniments. If he was equal 
to the greatest things, he was not above an 
attention to the smallest. Thus the gallant 
sportsmen in Cymbeline have to encounter 
the abrupt declivities of hill and valley: Touch- 
stone and Audrey jog along a level path. The 
deer in Cymbeline are only regarded as objects 
of prey, " The game's a-foot," &c. — with Jaques 
they are fine subjects to moralize upon at lei- 
sure, " under the shade of melancholy boughs." 

We cannot take leave of this play, which is 



CYMBELINE. 13 

a favourite with us, without noticing some oc- 
casional touches of natural piety and morality. 
We may allude here to the opening of the scene 
in which Bellarius instructs the young princes 
to pay their orisons to heaven : 

'* See, Boys ! this gate 

Instructs you how t' adore the Heav'ns ; and bows you 
To morning's holy office. 

Guiderius. Hail, Heav'n ! 

Arviragus. Hail, Heav'n ! 

Bellarius. Now for our mountain-sport, up to yon hill." 

What a grace and unaffected spirit of piety 
breathes in this passage ! In like manner, one 
of the brothers says to the other, when about to 
perform the funeral rites to Fidele, 

* ' Nay, Cad wall, we must lay his head to the east ; 
My Father hath a reason for't.'' 

Shakespear's morality is introduced in the 
same simple, unobtrusive manner. Imogen will 
not let her companions stay away from the 
chase to attend her when sick, and gives her 
reason for it — 

" Stick to your journal course ; the breach of custom 
Is breach of all /" 

When the Queen attempts to disguise her mo- 
tives for procuring the poison from Cornelius, by 



14 CYMBELIXE. 

saying she means to try its effects on " creatures 
not worth the hanging," his answer conveys at 
once a tacit reproof of her hypocrisy, and a use- 
ful lesson of humanity — 

a/ 

""Your Highness 



Shall from this practice but make hard your heart." 



MACBETH. 



<c The poet's eye in a fine frenzy rolling 

Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven ; 

And as imagination bodies forth 

The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen 

Turns them to shape, and gives to airy nothing 

A local habitation and a name." 

Macbeth and Lear, Othello and Hamlet, are 
usually reckoned Shakespear's four principal 
tragedies. Lear stands first for the profound 
intensity of the passion ; Macbeth foiL -lhe 
wHdnes^^o^ 

of the action ; Othello for the progressive in- 
terest and powerful alternations of feeling ; 
Hamlet for the refined developement of thought 
and sentiment. If the force of genius shewn 
in each of these works is astonishing, their 
variety is not less so. They are like dif- 
ferent creations of the same mind, not one of 
which has the slightest reference to the rest. 



16 MACBETH. 

This distinctness and originality is indeed the 
necessary consequence of truth and nature. 
Shakespear's genius alone appeared to possess 
the resources of nature. He is " your only tra- 
gedy-maker" His plays have the force of things 
upon the mind. What he represents is brought 
home to the bosom as a part of our experience, 
implanted in the memory as if we had known 
the places, persons, and things of which he 
treats. Macbeth is like a record of a preter- 
natural and tragical event. It has the rug- 
ged severity of an old chronicle with all that 
the imagination of the poet can engraft upon 
traditional belief. The castle of Macbeth, 
round which " the air smells wooingly," and 
where " the temple-haunting martlet builds," 
has a real subsistence in the mind ; the Weird 
Sisters meet us in person on sc the blasted heath ;" 
the " air-drawn dagger" moves slowly before 
our eyes ; the " gracious Duncan," the " blood- 
boultered Banquo" stand before us ; all that 
passed through the mind of Macbeth passes, 
without the loss of a tittle, through our's. All 
that could actually take place, and all that is 
only possible to be conceived, what was said 
and what was done, the workings of passion, 
the spells of magic, are brought before us with 
the same absolute truth and vividness. — Shake- 
spear excelled in the openings of his plays : 
that of Macbeth is the most striking of any. 



MACBETH 17 

The wildness of the scenery, the sudden shifting 
of the situations and characters, the bustle, the 
expectations excited, are equally extraordinary. 
From the first entrance of the Witches and the 
description of them when they meet Macbeth, 

" What are these 

So wither'd and so wild in their attire, 

That look not like the inhabitants of th' earth 

And yet are on't?" 

the mind is prepared for all that follows. 

This tragedy is alike distinguished for the lofty 
imagination it displays, and for the tumultuous 
vehemence of the action ; and the one is made 
the moving principle of the other. The over- 
whelming pressure of preternatural agency urges 
on the tide of human passion with redoubled 
force. Macbeth himself^appears driven along 
by the violence of his fate like a vessel drift- 
ins: before a storm ; he reels to and fro like 
a drunken man ; he staggers under the weight 
of his own purposes and the suggestions of 
others.;, he stands at bay with his situation ; 
and from the superstitious awe and breathless 
suspense into which the communications of the 
Weird Sisters throw him, is hurried on with 
darin g i m patien ce , jto verify" their predictions, 
and with impious and bloody hand to tear aside 
the veil which hides the uncertainty of the fu- 
ture. He is not equal t o the struggle with Jate 
and conscience^ He now " bends up each 

c 



18 MACBETH. 

corporal instrument to the terrible feat;" at 
other times higLJ&eanjmisgives him, and he is 
cowed and abashed by his success. " The deed, 
no less than the attempt, confounds him." His 
min^is^assdJfidJbjL JEfelLgtings of remorse, and full 
of " preternatural solicitings." His speeches 
and soliloquies are dark riddles on human life, 
baffling solution, and entangling him in their la- 
byrinths. In thought he is absent and perplexed, 
sudden and desperate in act, from a distrust of 
his own resolution. His energy springs from 
the anxiety and agitation of his mind. His 
blindly rushing forward on the objects of his am- 
bition and revenge, or his recoiling from them, 
equally betrays the harassed state of his feelings. 
— This part of his character is admirably jet off 
by being brought in connection with that of Lady 
Macbeth, whose obdurate strength of will and 
masculine firmness give her the ascendancy over 
her husband's faultering virtue. She at once 
seizes on the opportunity that offers for the ac- 
complishment of all their wished-for greatness, 
and never flinches from her object till all is 
over. The magnitude of her resolution almost 
covers the magnitude of her guilt. She is a great 
bad woman, whom we hate, but whom we fear 
more than we hate. She does not excite our 
loathing and abhorrence like Regan and Gone- 
rill. She is only wicked to gain a great end ; 
and is perhaps more distinguished by her com- 



MACBETH. 19 

manding presence of mind and inexorable self- 
will, which do not suffer her to be diverted from 
a bad purpose, when once formed, by weak and 
womanly regrets, than by the hardness of her 
heart or want of natural affections. The im- 
pression which her lofty determination of cha- 
racter makes on the mind of Macbeth is well 
described where he exclaims, 

' c Bring forth men children only j 



For thy undaunted mettle should compose 
Nothing but males !" 

Nor do the pains she is at to " screw his courage 
to the sticking-place", the reproach to him, 
not to be " lost so poorly in himself," the assu- 
rance that " a little water clears them of this 
deed," shew any thing but her greater consis- 
tency in depravity. Her strong-nerved ambi- 
tion furnishes ribs of steel to " the sides of his 
intent;" and she is herself wound up to the exe- 
cution of her baneful project with the same un- 
shrinking fortitude in crime, that in other cir- 
cumstances she would probably have shewn 
patience in suffering. The deliberate sacrifice 
of all other considerations to the gaining " for 
their future days and nights sole sovereign sway 
and masterdom," by the murder of Duncan, is 
gorgeously expressed in her invocation on hear- 
ing of " his fatal entrance under her battle- 
ments :" — 



20 MACBETH. 



Come all you spirits 



That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here : 
And fill me, from the crown to th' toe, top-full 
Of direst cruelty ; make thick my blood, 
Stop up the access and passage to remorse, 
That no compunctious visitings of nature 
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between 
The effect and it. Come to my woman's breasts, 
And take my milk for gall, you murthering ministers, 
Wherever in your sightless substances 
You wait on nature's mischief. Come, thick night ! 
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell, 
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes, 
Nor heav'n peep through the blanket of the dark, 
To cry, hold, hold!"— 

When she first hears that " Duncan comes there 
to sleep" she is so overcome by the news, which 
is beyond her utmost expectations, that she 
answers the messenger, " Thou'rt mad to say 
it :" and on receiving her husband's account of 
the predictions of the Witches, conscious of his 
instability of purpose, and that her presence is 
necessary to goad him on to the consummation 
of his promised greatness, she exclaims — 

<( Hie thee hither, 
That I may pour my spirits in thine ear, 
And chastise with the valour of my tongue 
All that impedes thee from the golden round, 
Which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem 
To have thee crowned withal." 

This swelling exultation and keen spirit of tri- 
umph, this uncontroulable eagerness of anticipa- 



MACBETH. 21 

tion, which seems to dilate her form and take 
possession of all her faculties, this solid, sub- 
stantial flesh and blood display of passion, ex- 
hibit a striking contrast to the cold, abstracted, 
gratuitous, servile malignity of the Witches, who 
are equally instrumental in urging Macbeth to 
his fate for the mere love of mischief, and from 
a disinterested delight in deformity and cruel- 
ty. They are hags of mischief, obscene panders 
to iniquity, malicious from their impotence of 
enjoyment, enamoured of destruction, because 
they are themselves unreal, abortive, half-exis- 
tences, and who become sublime from their 
exemption from all human sympathies and con- 
tempt for all human affairs, as Lady Macbeth 
does by the force of passion ! Her fault seems 
to have been an excess of that strong principle 
of self-interest and family aggrandisement, not 
amenable to the common feelings of compas- 
sion and justice, which is so marked a feature in 
barbarous nations and times. A passing reflec- 
tion of this kind, on the resemblance of the 
sleeping king to her father, alone prevents her 
from slaying Duncan with her own hand. 

In speaking of the character of Lady Mac- 
beth, we ought not to pass over Mrs. Siddons's 
manner of acting that part. We can conceive 
of nothing grander. It was something above 
nature. It seemed almost as if a being of a su- 
perior order had dropped from a higher sphere to 



22 MACBETH. 

awe the world with the majesty of her appear-: 
ance. Power was seated on her brow, passion 
emanated from her breast as from a shrine ; she 
was tragedy personified. In coming on in the 
sleepjng-scene, her eyes were open, but their 
sense was shut. She was like a person bewil- 
dered and unconscious of what she did. Her 
lips moved involuntarily — all her gestures were 
involuntary and mechanical. She glided on and 
off the stage like an apparition. To have seen 
her in that character was an event in every one's 
life, not to be forgotten. 

The dramatic beauty of the character of Dun- 
can, which excites the respect and pity even 
of his murderers, has been often pointed out. 
It forms a picture of itself. An instance of the 
author's power of giving a striking effect to a 
common reflection, by the manner of introducing 
it, occurs in a speech of Duncan, complaining 
of his having been deceived in his opinion of 
the Thane of Cawdor, at the very moment that 
he is expressing the most unbounded confidence 
in the loyalty and services of Macbeth. 

<e There is no art 
To find the mind's construction in the face : 
He was a gentleman, on whom I built 
An absolute trust. 

O worthiest cousin, (addressing himself to Macbeth) 
The sin of my ingratitude e'en now 
Was great upon me/' &c 



MACBETH. 23 

Another passage to shew that Shakespear lost 
sight of nothing that could in any way give 
relief or heightening to his subject, is the con- 
versation which takes place between Banquo 
and Fleance immediately before the murder- 
scene of Duncan. 

" Banquo. How goes the night, boy ? 

Fleance, The moon is down : I have not heard the clock 

Banquo. And she goes down at twelve. 

Fleance. I take't, 'tis later, Sir. 

Banquo. Hold, take my sword. There's husbandry in 
heav'n, 
Their candles are all out. — 
A heavy summons lies like lead upon me, 
And yet I would not sleep : Merciful Powers, 
Restrain in me the cursed thoughts that nature 
Gives way to in repose." 

In like manner, a fine idea is given of the 
gloomy coming on of evening, just as Banquo 
is going to be assassinated. 

" Light thickens and the crow 

Makes wing to the rooky wood." 

*********** 

" Now spurs the lated traveller apace 
To gain the timely inn." 

Macbeth (generally speaking) is done upon 
a stronger and more systematic principle of con- 
trast than any other of Shakespear's plays. It 



24 MACBETH. 

moves upon the verge of an abyss, and is a con- 
stant struggle between life and death. The 
action is desperate and the reaction is dreadful. 
It is a huddling together of fierce extremes, a war 
of opposite natures which of them shall destroy 
the other. There is nothing but what has a 
violent end or violent beginnings. The lights 
and shades are laid on with a determined hand; 
the transitions from triumph to despair, from 
the height of terror to the repose of death, are 
sudden and startling; every passion brings in 
its fellow - contrary, and the thoughts pitch 
and jostle against each other as in the dark. 
The whole play is an unruly chaos of strange 
and forbidden things, where the ground rocks 
under our feet. Shakespear's genius here took 
its full swing, and trod upon the farthest bounds 
of nature and passion. This circumstance will 
account for the abruptness and violent antitheses 
of the style, the throes and labour which run 
through the expression, and from defects will 
turn them into beauties. " So fair and foul a day 
I have not seen," &c. " Such welcome and un- 
welcome news together." " Men*s lives are like 
the flowers in their caps, dying or ere they sick- 
en." u Look like the innocent flower, but be the 
serpent under it." The scene before the castle- 
gate follows the appearance of the Witches on 
the heath, and is followed by a midnight murder, 



MACBETH. 25 

Duncan is cut off betimes by treason leagued 
with witchcraft, and Macduff is ripped untimely 
from his mother's womb to avenge his death. 
Macbeth, after the death of Banquo, wishes for 
his presence in extravagant terms, " To him and 
all we thirst," and when his ghost appears, cries 
out, " Avaunt and quit my sight," and being 
gone, he is " himself again." Macbeth resolves 
to get rid of Macduff, that " he may sleep in 
spite of thunder;" and cheers his wife on the 
doubtful intelligence of Banquo's taking-off with 
the encouragement — " Then be thou jocund : ere 
the bat has flown his cloistered flight ; ere to 
black Hecate's summons the shard-born beetle 
has rung night's yawning peal, there shall be 
done — a deed of dreadful note." In Lady Mac- 
beth's speech " Had he not resembled my father 
as he slept, I had done 't," there is murder and 
filial piety together, and in urging him to fulfil 
his vengeance against the defenceless king, her 
thoughts spare the blood neither of infants nor 
old age. The description of the Witches is full 
of the same contradictory principle ; they " re- 
joice when good kings bleed," they are neither 
of the earth nor the air, but both ; " they 
should be women, but their beards forbid it;" 
they take all the pains possible to lead Mac- 
beth on to the height of his ambition, only 
to betray him in deeper consequence, and after 



26 MACBETH. 

shewing him all the pomp of their art, dis- 
cover their malignant delight in his disappointed 
hopes, by that bitter taunt, " Why stands Mac- 
beth thus amazedly >" We might multiply such 
instances every where. 

The leading features in the character of 
Macbeth are striking enough, and they form 
what may be thought at first only a bold, rude, 
Gothic outline. By comparing it with other 
characters of the same author we shall per- 
ceive the absolute truth and identity which is 
observed in the midst of the giddy whirl and 
rapid career of events. Macbeth in Shakespear 
no more loses his identity of character in the 
fluctuations of fortune or the storm of passion, 
than Macbeth in himself would have lost the 
identity of his person. Thus he is as distinct a 
being from Richard III. as it is possible to ima- 
gine, though these two characters in common 
hands, and indeed in the hands of any other 
poet, would have been a repetition of the same 
general idea, more or less exaggerated. For 
both are tyrants, usurpers, murderers, both as- 
piring and ambitious, both courageous, -cruel, 
treacherous. But Richard is cruel from nature 
and constitution. Macbeth becomes so from 
accidental circumstances. Richard is from his 
birth deformed in body and mind, and natu- 
rally incapable of good. Macbeth is full of " the 



MACBETH. 27 

milk of human kindness," is frank, sociable, 
generous, Hejs^ of 

guilt by golden opportunities, by the instiga- 
tions of his wife, and by prophetic warnings. 
Fate and metaphysical aid conspire against his 
virtue and his loyalty. Richard on the con- 
trary needs no prompter, but wades through a se- 
ries of crimes to the height of his ambition from 
the ungovernable violence of his temper and a 
reckless love of mischief. He is never gay but 
in the prospect or in the success of his villainies: 
M acbeth is full of hoj^^L^t^Jie_ibLQiights of jhe 
murder of -Duacan,^which.he is with difficulty 
prevailed on to jcommit, and of j^m^sja^fterJLts 
perpetration. Richard has no mixture of com- 
mon humanity in his composition, no regard to 
kindred or posterity, he owns no fellowship with 
others, he is " himself alone." Macbeth is 
not destitute of J^lj,ni[s„gX§xmrjathv:,Js accessi- 
ble to pity,Js even made, in some measure the 

dupe of his u xor iousness,.., jcaa ka the los s of 

friends, of the cordial 4ove,afJWs^ollow<ej^_and 
of his good najae^maogJi^^ 
made him weary of life, and regrets that he has 
ever seized the crown by unjust means, since he 
cannot transmit it to his posterity— 

<f For Banquo's issue have I 'fil'd my mind — 
For them the gracious Duncan have I murther'd., 
To make them kings, the seed of Banquo kings." 



28 MACBETH. 

In the agitation of his thoughts, he envies those 
whom he has sent to peace. " Duncan is in his 
grave ; after life's fitful fever he sleeps well." — 
fit is true, he becomes more caJlous as he plunges 
deeper in guilt, " direness is thus rendered fa- 
miliar to his slaughterous thoughts," and he in 
the end anticipates his wife in the boldness and 
bloodiness of his enterprises, while she for want 
of the same stimulus of action, is " troubled 
with thick-coming fancies that rob her of her 
rest," goes mad and dies. Macbeth endeavours 
to escape from reflection on his crimes by repel- 
ling their consequences, and banishes remorse 
for the past by the meditation of future mischief. 
This is not the principle of Richard's cruelty, 
which resembles the wanton malice of a fiend 
as much as the frailty of human passion. Mac- 
beth isjgoj^p^oji j£_a£t^o^ 
tion by necessity; to Richard, blood is a pastime. 
— There are other decisive differences inherent 
in the two characters. Richard may be regarded 
as a man of the world, a plotting, hardened knave, 
wholly regardless of every thing but his own 
ends, and the means to secure them — Not so 
Macbeth. The superstitions of the age, the 
rude state of society, the local scenery and cus- 
toms, all give a wildness and imaginary grandeur 
to his character. From the strangeness of the 
events that surround him, he is full of _,am3£gr 



MACBETH. 29 

ment and fear; and stands in doubt between 
the world of reality and the world of fancy. He 
sees sights not she wn to mo rtajh^^an'jd hears 
unearthly music. All is tumult and disorder 
within and without his mind; his purposes re- 
coil upon himself, are broken and disjointed ; 
he is the double thrall of his passions and his 
evil destiny, Richard is not a character either 
of imagination or pathos, but of pure self-will. 
There is no conflict of opposite feelings in his 
breast. The apparitions which he sees only 
haunt him in his sleep; nor does he Jive like 
JVlajsbetl^in^a^w^ Macbeth has 

co nsi derab lft „en .ergyan d manliness of^crTaracter ; 
but then he is " subject to all the skyey influ- 
ences." He is sure of nothing but the present 
moment. Richard in the busy turbulence of 
his projects never loses his self-possession, and 
makes use of every circumstance that happens 
as an instrument of his long-reaching designs. 
In his last extremity we can only regard him as 
a wild beast taken in the toils: /we nev er en - 
t«y%_io^e_j&LL^^ 

c alls back all our sympathy by that fin e close of 
thoughtful melancholy— 

" My way of life is fallen into the sear, 
The yellow leaf; and that which should accompany old age, 
As honour, troops of friends, I must not look to have 5 
But in their stead, curses not loud but deep, 



30 MACBETH. 

Mouth-honour, breath, which the poor heart 
Would fain deny and dare not." 

We can conceive a common actor to play 
Richard tolerably well ; we can conceive no 
one to play Macbeth properly, or to look like a 
man that had encountered the Weird Sisters. 
All the actors that we have ever seen, appear as 
if they had encountered them on the boards of 
Covent-garden or Drury-lane, but not on the 
heath at Fores, and as if they did not believe what 
they had seen. The Witches of Macbeth in- 
deed are ridiculous on the modern stage, and we 
doubt if the furies of iEschylus would be more 
respected. The progress of manners and know- 
ledge has an influence on the stage, and will in 
time perhaps destroy both tragedy and comedy. 
Filch's picking pockets, in the Beggars 9 Opera, 
is not so good a jest as it used to be : by the 
force of the police and of philosophy, Lillo's 
murders and the ghosts in Shakespear will be- 
come obsolete. At last there will be nothing 
left, good nor bad, to be desired or dreaded, on 
the theatre or in real life. A question has been 
started with respect to the originality of Shake- 
spear's Witches, which has been well answered 
by Mr. Lamb in his notes to the " Specimens 
of Early Dramatic Poetry." — 

" Though some resemblance may be traced 



MACBETH. SI 

between the charms in Macbeth, and the in- 
cantations in this play, (the Witch of Middle- 
ton) which is supposed to have preceded it, 
this coincidence will not detract much from the 
originality of Shakespear. His Witches are dis- 
tinguished from the Witches of Middleton by 
essential differences. These are creatures to 
whom man or woman plotting some dire mis- 
chief might resort for occasional consultation. 
Those originate deeds of blood, and begin bad 
impulses^to men. From the moment that their 
eyes first meet with Macbeth's, he is spell- 
bound. That meeting sways his destiny. „He 
can never break the fascination. These Witches 
can hurt the body ; those have power over the 
soul. — Hecate in Middleton has a son, a low 
buffoon : the hags of Shakespear have neither 
child of their own, nor seem to be descended 
from any parent. They are foul anomalies, of 
whom we know not whence they are sprung, 
nor whether they have beginning or ending. As 
they are without human passions, so they seem 
to be without human relations. They come 
with thunder and lightning, and vanish to airy 
music. This is all we know of them. — Except 
Hecate, they have no names, which heightens 
their mysteriousness. The names, and some of 
the properties which Middleton has given to 
his hags, excite smiles. The Weird Sisters are 



32 MACBETH. 

serious things. Their presence cannot co-exist 
with mirth. But, in a lesser degree, the Witches 
of Middleton are fine creations. Their power 
too is, in some measure, over the mind. They 
raise jars, jealousies, strifes, like a thick scurf 
o'er life:' 



JULIUS C^SAR. 



Julius Cesar was one of three principal plays 
by different authors, pitched upon by the cele- 
brated Earl of Hallifax to be brought out in a 
splendid manner by subscription, in the year 
1707. The other two were the King and No 
King of Fletcher, and Dryden^s Maiden Queen. 
There perhaps might be political reasons for this 
selection, as far as regards our author. Other- 
wise, Shakespear's Julius Caesar is not equal as 
a whole, to either of his other plays taken from 
the Roman history. It is inferior in interest to 
Coriolanus, and both in interest and power to 
Antony and Cleopatra. It however abounds 
in admirable and affecting passages, and is re- 
markable for the profound knowledge of cha- 
racter, in which Shakespear could scarcely fail. 
If there is any exception to this remark, it is in 



34 JULIUS C^SAR. 

the hero of the piece himself. We do not much 
admire the representation here given of Julius 
Caesar, nor do we think it answers to the portrait 
given of him in his Commentaries. He makes 
several vapouring and rather pedantic speeches, 
and does nothing. Indeed, he has nothing to 
do. So far, the fault of the character might be 
the fault of the plot. 

The spirit with which the poet has entered at 
once into the manners of the common people, 
and the jealousies and heart-burnings of the dif- 
ferent factions, is shewn in the first scene, when 
Flavius and Marullus, tribunes of the people, and 
some citizens of Rome, appear upon the stage. 

" Flavins. Thou art a cobler, art thou ? 

Cobler. Truly, Sir, all that I live by, is the awl : I med- 
dle with no tradesman's matters, nor woman's matters, but 
with-al, I am indeed, Sir, a surgeon to old shoes -, when 
they are in great danger, I recover them. 

Flavius. But wherefore art not in thy shop to day ? 
Why do'st thOu lead these men about the streets ? 

Cobler. Truly, Sir, to wear out their shoes, to get myself 
into more work. But indeed, Sir, we make holiday to see 
Caesar, and rejoice in his triumph." 

To this specimen of quaint low humour im- 
mediately follows that unexpected and animated 
burst of indignant eloquence, put into the 
mouth of one of the angry tribunes. 

Marullus. " Wherefore rejoice ! — What conquest brings 
he home ? 



JULIUS CAESAR. 35 

What tributaries follow him to Rome, 
To grace in captive-bonds his chariot-wheels ? 
Oh you hard hearts, you cruel men of Rome ! 
Knew you not Pompey ? Many a time and oft 
Have you climb'd up to walls and battiements, 
To towers and windows, yea, to chitnney-tops, 
Your infants in your arms, and there have sat 
The live-long day with patient expectation, 
To see great Pompey pass the streets of Rome : 
And when you saw his chariot but appear, 
Have you not made an universal shout, 
That Tyber trembled underneath his banks 
To hear the replication of your sounds, 
Made in his concave shores ? 
And do you now put on your best attire ? 
And do you now cull out an holiday ? 
And do you now strew flowers in his way 
That comes in triumph over Pompey's blood ? 

Begone 

Run to your houses, fall upon your knees, 
Pray to the Gods to intermit the plague, 
That needs must light on this ingratitude." 



The well-known dialogue between Brutus and 
Cassius, in which the latter breaks the design 
of the conspiracy to the former, and partly gain9 
him over to it, is a noble piece of high-minded 
declamation. Cassius's insisting on the pre- 
tended effeminacy of Ceesar's character, and his 
description of their swimming across the Tiber 
together, " once upon a raw and gusty day," 
are among the finest strokes in it. But per- 
haps the whole is not equal to the short scene 



36 JULIUS CESAR. 

which follows when Caesar enters with bis 
train. 

" Brutus. The games are done, and Caesar is returning. 
Cassius. As they pass by, pluck Casca by the sleeve, 
And he will, after his sour fashion, tell you 
What has proceeded worthy note to day. 

Brutus. I will do so ; but look you, Cassius — 
The angry spot doth glow on Caesar's brow, 
And all the rest look like a chidden train. 
Calphurnia's cheek is pale ; and Cicero 
Looks with such ferret and such fiery eyes, 
As we have seen him in the Capitol, 
Being crost in conference by some senators. 
Cassius. Casca will tell us what the matter is. 

Ccesar. Antonius 

Antony. Caesar ? 

CcEsar. Let me have men about me that are fat. 
Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep a-nights : 
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look, 
He thinks too much j such men are dangerous. 

Antony. Fear him not, Caesar, he's not dangerous ; 
He is a noble Roman, and well given. 

Ccesar. Would he were fatter ; but I fear him not : 
Yet if my name were liable to fear, 
I do not know the man I should avoid 
So soon as that spare Cassius. He reads much ; 
He is a great observer -, and he looks 
Quite through the deeds of men. He loves no plays. 
As thou dost, Antony ; he hears no music : 
Seldom he smiles, and smiles in such a sort, 
As if he mock'd himself, and scorn'd his spirit,, 
That could be mov'd to smile at any thing. 
Such men as he be never at heart's ease, 
Whilst they behold a greater than themselves ; 



JULIUS CESAR. 37 

And therefore are they very dangerous. 
I rather tell thee what is to be fear'd 
Than what I fear j for always I am Caesar. 
Come on my right hand, for this ear is deaf, 
And tell me truly what thou think'st of him." 

We know hardly any passage more expressive 
of the genius of Shakespear than this. It is as 
if he had been actually present, had known the 
different characters and what they thought of 
one another, and had taken down what he heard 
and saw, their looks, words, and gestures, just 
as they happened. 

The character of Mark Antony is farther spe- 
culated upon where the conspirators deliberate 
whether he shall fall with Caesar. Brutus is 
against it— 

" And for Mark Antony, think not of him : 
For he can do no more than Caesar's arm, 
When Caesar's head is off. 

Cassius. Yet do I fear him : 
For in th' ingrafted love he hears tp Caesar— 

Brutus. Alas, good Cassius, do not think of him : 
If he love Caesar, all that he can do 
Is to himself, take thought, and die for Caesar : 
And that were much, he should 5 for he is giv'n 
To sports, to wildness, and much company. 

Trebonius. There is no fear in him 5 let him not die : 
For he will live, and laugh at this hereafter." 

They were in the wrong ; and Cassius was right. 
The honest manliness of Brutus js however 



38 JULIUS CAESAR. 

sufficient to find out the unfitness of Cicero to be 
included in their enterprize, from his affected 
egotism and literary vanity ? 

" O, name him not : let us not break with him 3 
For he will never follow any thing, 
That other men begin." 

His scepticism as to prodigies and his mo^ 
ralising on the weather — " This disturbed sky 
is not to walk in" — are in the same spirit of 
refined imbecility. 

Shakespear has in this play and elsewhere 
shewn the same penetration into political cha- 
racter and the springs of public events as into 
those of every-day life. For instance, the 
whole design to liberate their country fails 
from the generous temper and overweening 
confidence of Brutus in the goodness of their 
cause and the assistance of others. Thus it 
has always been. Those who mean well" them- 
selves think well of others, and fall a prey to 
their security. That humanity and sincerity 
which dispose men to resist injustice and tyran- 
ny render them unfit to cope with the cunning 
and power of those who are opposed to them. 
The friends of liberty trust to the professions of 
others, because they are themselves sincere, and 
endeavour to secure the public good with the 
least possible hurt to its enemies, who have no 
regard to any thing but their own unprincipled 



JULIUS C^SAR. 39 

ends, and stick at nothing to accomplish them. 
Cassius was better cut out for a conspirator. 
His heart prompted his head. His habitual jea- 
lousy made him fear the worst that might hap- 
pen, and his irritability of temper added to his 
inveteracy of purpose, and sharpened his patri- 
otism. The mixed nature of his motives made 
him fitter to contend with bad men. The vices 
are never so well employed as in combating one 
another. Tyranny and servility are to be dealt 
with after their own fashion : otherwise, they 
will triumph over those who spare them, and 
finally pronounce their funeral panegyric, as An- 
tony did that of Brutus. 

t( All the conspirators, save only he, 

Did that they did in envy of great Csesar : 

He only in a general honest thought 

And common good to all, made one of them." 

The quarrel between Brutus and Cassius is ma- 
naged in a masterly way. The dramatic fluctu- 
ation of passion, the calmness of Brutus, the 
heat of Cassius, are admirably described ; and 
the exclamation of Cassius on hearing of the 
death of Portia, which he does not learn till 
after their reconciliation, " How 'scap'd I kil- 
ling when I crost you so?" gives double force 
to all that has gone before. The scene between 
Brutus and Portia, where she endeavours to ex- 
tort the secret of the conspiracy from him, is 



4a JULIUS C^iSAR. 

conceived in the most heroical spirit, and the 
burst of tenderness in Brutus — 

ff You are my true and honourable wife j 
As dear to me as are the ruddy drops 
That visit my sad heart" — 

is justified by her whole behaviour. Portia's 
breathless impatience to learn the event of the 
conspiracy, in the dialogue with Lucius, is full 
of passion. The interest which Portia takes in 
Brutus and that which Calphurnia takes in the 
fate of Caesar are discriminated with the nicest 
precision. Mark Antony's speech over the dead 
body of Caesar has been justly admired for the 
mixture of pathos and artifice in it : that of Bru- 
tus certainly is not so good. 

The entrance of the conspirators to the house 
of Brutus at midnight is rendered very impres- 
sive. In the midst of this scene, we meet with 
one of those careless and natural digressions 
which occur so frequently and beautifully in 
Shakespear. After Cassius has introduced his 
friends one by one, Brutus says, 

" They are all welcome. 
What watchful cares do interpose themselves 
Betwixt your eyes and night ? 

Cassius. Shall I entreat a word? (They whisper.) 

Decius. Here lies the east : doth not the day break here * 

Casca. No. 

Cinna. O pardon. Sir, it doth 5 and yon grey lines, 
That fret the clouds, are messengers of day. 



JULIUS C^SAR. 41 

Casca. You shall confess, that you are both deeeiv'd : 
Here, as I point my sword, the sun arises, 
Which is a great way growing on the south, 
Weighing the youthful season of the year. 
Some two months hence, up higher toward the north 
He first presents his fire, and the high east 
Stands as the Capitol, directly here." 

We cannot help thinking this graceful famili- 
arity better than all the formality in the world. 
The truth of history in Julius Caesar is very 
ably worked up with dramatic effect. The coun- 
cils of generals, the doubtful turns of battles are 
represented to the life. The death of Brutus is 
worthy of him — it has the dignity of the Roman 
senator with the firmness of the Stoic philoso- 
pher. But what is perhaps better than either, is 
the little incident of his boy, Lucius, falling asleep 
over his instrument, as he is playing to his mas- 
ter in his tent, the night before the battle. Na- 
ture had played him the same forgetful trick 
once before on the night of the conspiracy. The 
humanity of Brutus is the same on both occa- 
sions. 

" It is no matter : 



Enjoy the honey-heavy dew of slumber. 
Thou hast no figures nor no fantasies, 
Which busy care draws in the brains of men. 
Therefore thou sleep'st so sound." 



OTHELLO 



It has been said that tragedy purifies the affec- 
tions by terror and pity. That is, it substitutes, 
imaginary sympathy for mere selfishness. It 
gives us a high and permanent interest, beyond 
ourselves, in humanity as such. It raises the 
great, the remote, and the possible to an equa- 
lity with the real, the little and the near. It 
makes man a partaker with his kind. It sub- 
dues and softens the stubbornness of his will. 
It teaches him that there are and have been 
others like himself, by shewing him as in a glass 
what they have felt, thought, and done. It opens 
the chambers of the human heart. It leaves no-* 
thing indifferent to us that can affect our com- 
mon nature. It excites our sensibility by exhi- 
biting the passions wound up to the utmost 
pitch by the power of imagination or the temp- 



OTHELLO. 43 

tation of circumstances ; and corrects their fatal 
excesses in ourselves by pointing to the greater 
extent of sufferings and of crimes to which they 
have led others. Tragedy creates a balance of 
the affections. It makes us thoughtful specta- 
tors in the lists of life. It is the refiner of the 
species ; a discipline of humanity. The habi- 
tual study of poetry and works of imagination 
is one chief part of a well-grounded education. 
A taste for liberal art is necessary to complete 
the character of a gentleman. Science alone is 
hard and mechanical. It exercises the under- 
standing upon things out of ourselves, while it 
leaves the affections unemployed, or engross- 
ed with our own immediate, narrow interests. 
— Othello furnishes an illustration of these 
remarks. It excites our sympathy in an ex- 
traordinary degree. The moral it conveys has 
a closer application to the concerns of human 
life than that of any other of Shakespear's plays. 
" It comes directly home to the bosoms and 
business of men." The pathos in Lear is in- 
deed more dreadful and overpowering : but it is 
less natural, and less of every day's occurrence. 
We have not the same degree of sympathy with 
the passions described in Macbeth. The inter- 
est in Hamlet is more remote and reflex. That 
of Othello is at once equally profound and af- 
fecting. 

The picturesque contrasts of character in this 



44 OTHELLO. 

play are almost as remarkable as the depth of 
the passion. The Moor Othello, the gentle 
Desdemona, the villain Iago, the good-natured 
Cassio, the fool Roderigo, present a range and 
variety of character as striking and palpable as 
that produced by the opposition of costume in 
a picture. Their distinguishing qualities stand 
out to the mind's eye, so that even when we 
are not thinking of their actions or sentiments, 
the idea of their persons is still as present to us 
as ever. These characters and the images they 
stamp upon the mind are the farthest asunder 
possible, the distance between them is immense: 
yet the compass of knowledge and invention 
which the poet has shewn in embodying these 
extreme creations of his genius is only greater 
than the truth and felicity with which he has 
identified each character with itself, or blended 
their different qualities together in the same 
story. What a contrast the character of Othello 
forms to that of Iago : at the same time, the 
force of conception with which these two figures 
are opposed to each other is rendered still more 
intense by the complete consistency with which 
the traits of each character are brought out 
in a state of the highest finishing. The making 
one black and the other white, the one unprinci- 
pled, the other unfortunate in the extreme, would 
have answered the common purposes of effect, 
and satisfied the ambition of an ordinary painter 



OTHELLO. 45 

of character. Shakespear has laboured the finer 
shades of difference in both with as much care 
and skill as if he had had to depend on the exe- 
cution alone for the success of his design. On 
the other hand, Desdemona and ^Emilia are not 
meant to be opposed with any thing like strong 
contrast to each other. Both are, to outward 
appearance, characters of common life, not more 
distinguished than women usually are, by dif- 
ference of rank and situation. The difference 
of their thoughts and sentiments is however laid 
as open, their minds are separated from each 
other by signs as plain and as little to be mis- 
taken as the complexions of their husbands. 

The movement of the passion in Othello is 
exceedingly different from that of Macbeth. In 
Macbeth there is a violent struggle between op- 
posite feelings, between ambition and the stings 
of conscience, almost from first to last : in 
Othello, the doubtful conflict between contra- 
ry passions, though dreadful, continues only 
for a short time, and the chief interest is excited 
by the alternate ascendancy of different passions, 
the entire and unforeseen change from the fondest 
love and most unbounded confidence to the tor- 
tures of jealousy and the madness of hatred. 
The revenge of Othello, after it has once taken 
thorough possession of his mind, never quits it, 
but grows stronger and stronger at every moment 
of its delay. The nature of the Moor is noble, 



46 OTHELLO. 

confiding, tender, and generous ; but his blood 
is of the most inflammable kind ; and being 
once roused by a sense of his wrongs, he is 
stopped by no considerations of remorse or pity 
till he has given a loose to all the dictates of his 
rage and his despair. It is in working his noble 
nature up to this extremity through rapid but 
gradual transitions, in raising passion to its 
height from the smallest beginnings and in spite 
of all obstacles, in painting the expiring conflict 
between love and hatred, tenderness and resent- 
ment, jealousy and remorse, in unfolding the 
strength and the weaknesses of our nature, 
in uniting sublimity of thought with the anguish 
of the keenest woe, in putting in motion the 
various impulses that agitate this our mortal 
being, and at last blending them in that noble 
tide of deep and sustained passion, impetuous 
but majestic, that " flows on to the Propontic, 
and knows no ebb," that Shakespear has shewn 
the mastery of his genius and of his power over 
the human heart. The third act of Othello 
is his master-piece, not of knowledge or passion 
separately, but of the two combined, of the 
knowledge of character with the expression of 
passion, of consummate art in the keeping up 
of appearances with the profound workings of 
nature, and the convulsive movements of un- 
controulable agony, of the power of inflicting 
torture and of suffering it. Not only is the tu- 



OTHELLO. 47 

mult of passion heaved up from the very bottom 
of the soul, but every the slightest undulation 
of feeling is seen on the surface, as it arises from 
the impulses of imagination or the different pro- 
babilities maliciously suggested by Iago. The 
progressive preparation for the catastrophe is 
wonderfully managed from the Moor's first gal- 
lant recital of the story of his love, of " the spells 
and witchcraft he had used," from his unlooked- 
for and romantic success, the fond satisfaction 
with which he dotes on his own happiness, the 
unreserved tenderness of Desdemona and her in- 
nocent importunities in favour of Cassio, irri- 
tating the suspicions instilled into her husband's 
mind by the perfidy of Iago, and rankling there 
to poison, till he loses all command of himself, 
and his rage can only be appeased by blood. 
She is introduced, just before Iago begins to put 
his scheme in practice, pleading for Cassio with 
all the thoughtless gaiety of friendship and win- 
ning confidence in the love of Othello. 

" What ! Michael Cassio ? 
That came a wooing with you, and so many a time, 
When I have spoke of you dispraisingly, 
Hath ta'en your part, to have so much to do 
To bring him in ? — Why this is not a boon : 
'Tis as I should intreat you wear your gloves, 
Or feed on nourishing meats, or keep you warmj 
Or sue to you to do a peculiar profit 
To your person. Nay, when I have a suit, 
Wherein I mean to touch your love indeed, 
It shall be full of poise, and fearful to be granted." 



48 OTHELLO. 

Othello's confidence, at first only staggered by 
broken hints and insinuations, recovers itself at 
sight of Desdemona ; and he exclaims 

t( If she be false, O then Heav'n mocks itself: 
I'll not believe it." 

But presently after, on brooding over his suspi* 
cions by himself, and yielding to his apprehen- 
sions of the worst, his smothered jealousy breaks 
out into open fury, and he returns to demand 
satisfaction of Iago like a wild beast stung with 
the envenomed shaft of the hunters. " Look 
where he comes," &c. In this state of exaspe- 
ration and violence, after the first paroxysms of 
his grief and tenderness have had their vent in 
that passionate apostrophe, " I felt not Cassio's 
kisses on her lips," Iago by false aspersions, 
and by presenting the most revolting images to 
his mind,* easily turns the storm of passion from 
himself against Desdemona, and works him up 
into a trembling agony of doubt and fear, in 
which he abandons all his love and hopes in a 
breath. 

u Now do I see 'tis true. Look here, Iago, 

All my fond love thus do I blow to Heav'n. Tis gone. 

Arise black vengeance from the hollow hell ; 

Yield up, O love, thy crown and hearted throne 

To tyrannous hate ! Swell bosom with thy fraught ; 

For 'tis of aspicks' tongues." 

* See the passage beginning, {( It is impossible you. 
should see this, were they as prime as goats," &c. 



OTHELLO. 49 

From this time, his raging thoughts " never 
look back, ne'er ebb to humble love" till his 
revenge is sure of its object, the painful re- 
grets and involuntary recollections of past 
circumstances which cross his mind amidst 
the dim trances of passion, aggravating the 
sense of his wrongs, but not shaking his pur- 
pose. Once indeed, where lago shews him 
Cassio with the handkerchief in his hand, and 
making sport (as he thinks) of his misfortunes, 
the intolerable bitterness of his feelings, the 
extreme sense of shame, makes him fall to prais- 
ing her accomplishments and relapse into a 
momentary fit of weakness, " Yet, Oh the pity 
of lago, the pity of it !" This returning fond- 
ness however only serves, as it is managed by 
lago, to whet his revenge, and set his heart 
more against her. In his conversations with 
Desdemona, the persuasion of her guilt and 
the immediate proofs of her duplicity seem 
to irritate his resentment and aversion to her ; 
but in the scene immediately preceding her 
death, the recollection of his love returns upon 
him in all its tenderness and force ; and after 
her death, he all at once forgets his wrongs in 
the sudden and irreparable sense of his loss. 

" My wife ! My wife ! What wife ? I have no wife, 
Oh insupportable ! Oh heavy hour !" 

This happens before he is assured of her inno- 

B 



50 OTHELLO. 

cence ; but afterwards his remorse is as dreadful as 
his revenge has been, and yields only to fixed and 
death-like despair. His farevvel speech, before 
he kills himself, in which he conveys his reasons 
to the senate for the murder of his wife, is equal 
to the first speech in which he gave them an 
account of his courtship of her, and " his whole 
course of love." Such an ending was alone 
worthy of such a commencement. 

If any thing could add to the force of our 
sympathy with Othello, or compassion for his 
fate, it would be the frankness and generosity 
of his nature, which so little deserve it. When 
Iago first begins to practise upon his unsuspect- 
ing friendship, he answers — 

<e 'Tis not to make me jealous> 



To say my wife is fair., feeds well, loves company, 
Is free of speech, sings, plays, and dances well j 
Where virtue is, these are most virtuous. 
Nor from my own weak merits will I draw 
The smallest fear or doubt of her revolt, 
For she had eyes and chose me." 

This character is beautifully (and with affect- 
ing simplicity) confirmed by what Desdemona 
herself says of him to ^Emilia after she has lost 
the handkerchief, the first pledge of his love to 
her. 

" Believe me, I had rather have lost my purse 
Full of cruzadoes. And but my noble Moor 



OTHELLO. 51 

Is trite of mind, and made of no such baseness., 
As jealous creatures are, it were enough 
To put him to ill thinking. 

Emilia. Is he not jealous ? 

Desdemona. Who he ? I think the sun where he was 
born 
Drew all such humours from him." 

In a short speech of ./Emilia's, there occurs one 
of those side-intimations of the fluctuations of 
passion which we seldom meet with but in 
Shakespear. After Othello has resolved upon 
the death of his wife, and bids her dismiss her 
attendant for the night, she answers, 

<g I will, my Lord. 

^Emilia. How goes it nOw ? He looks gentler than he 
did." 

Shakespear has here put into ha'f a line what 
some authors would have spun out into ten set 
speeches. 

The character of Desdemona herself is inimi- 
table both in itself, and as it contrasts with 
Othello's groundless jealousy, and with the foul 
conspiracy of which she is the innocent victim* 
Her beauty and external graces are only indi- 
rectly glanced at; we see " her visage in her 
mind;" her character every where predominates 
over her person. 

" A maiden never bold : 

Of spirit so still and quiet, that her motion 

Blushed at itself." 



52 OTHELLO. 

There is one fine compliment paid to her by 
Cassio, who exclaims triumphantly when she 
comes ashore at Cyprus after the storm, 

" Tempests themselves, high seas, and howling winds.. 
As having sense of beauty, do omit 
Their mortal natures^ letting safe go by 
The divine Desdemona." 

In general, as is the case with most of Shake- 
spear's females, we lose sight of her personal 
charms in her attachment and devotedness to her 
husband. " She is subdued even to the very qua- 
lity of her lord;" and to Othello's " honours and 
his valiant parts her soul and fortunes conse- 
crates." The lady protests so much herself, and 
she is as good as her word. The truth of con- 
ception., with which timidity and boldness are 
united in the same character, is marvellous. 
The extravagance of her resolutions, the perti- 
nacity of her affections, may be said to arise out 
of the gentleness of her nature. They imply 
an unreserved reliance on the purity of her own 
intentions^ an entire surrender of her fears to 
her love, a knitting of herself (heart and soul) 
to the fate of another. Bating the commence- 
ment of her passion, which is a little fantastical 
and headstrong (though even that may perhaps 
be consistently accounted for from her inability 
to resist a rising inclination*) her whole charac- 

* " Iago. Ay, too gentle. 
Othello. Nay, that'* certain." 



OTHELLO. 53 

ter consists in having no will of her own, no 
prompter but her obedience. Her romantic 
turn is only a consequence of the domestic and 
practical part of her disposition ; and instead of 
following Othello to the wars, she would gladly 
have u remained at home a moth of peace," if 
her husband could have staid with her. Her 
resignation and angelic sweetness of temper do 
not desert her at the last. The scenes in which 
she laments and tries to account for Othello's 
estrangement from her are exquisitely beautiful. 
After he has struck her, and called her names, 
she says, 

~f f Alas, Iago, 

What shall I do to win my lord again ? 

Good friend, go to him } for by this light of heaven, 

I know not how I lost him. Here I kneel; 

If e'er my will did trespass 'gainst his love, 

Either in discourse, or thought, or actual deed, 

Or that mine eyes, mine ears, or any sense 

Delighted them on any other form ; 

Or that I do not, and ever did, 

And ever will, though he do shake me off 

To beggarly divorcement, love him dearly. 

Comfort forswear me. Unkindness may do much, 

And his unkindness may defeat my life, 

But never taint my love. 

Iago. I pray you be content : 'tis but his humour. 
The business of the state does him offence. 

Desdemona. If 'twere no other !" — 

The scene which follows with ^Emilia and the 



54 OTHELLO 

song of the Willow, are equally beautiful, and 
shew the author's extreme power of varying the 
expression of passion, in all its moods and in all 
circumstances. 

JEmilia. Would you had never seen him. 

Desdemona. So would not I : my love doth so approve 
him. 
That even his stubbornness, his checks, his frowns, 
Have grace and favour in them," &c. 

Not the unjust suspicions of Othello, not Iago's 
treachery, place Desdemona in a more amiable 
or interesting light than the casual conversation 
(half earnest, half jest) between her and y£mi- 
lia on the common behaviour of women to their 
husbands. This dialogue takes place just before 
the last fatal scene. If Othello had overheard 
it, it would have prevented the whole catas- 
trophe; but then it would have spoiled the play. 
The character of Iago is one of the super- 
erogations of Shakespear's genius. Some per- 
sons, more nice than wise, have thought this 
whole character unnatural, because his villainy 
is without a sufficient motive. Shakespear, who 
was as good a philosopher as he was a poet, 
thought otherwise. He knew that the love of 
power, which is another name for the love of 
mischief, is natural to man. He would know 
this as well or better than if it had been demon- 
strated to him by a logical diagram, merely from 



OTHELLO. 55 

seeing children paddle in the dirt or kill flies for 
sport. Iago in fact belongs to a class of cha- 
racters, common to Shakespear and at the same 
time peculiar to him ; whose heads are as acute 
and active as their hearts are hard and callous. 
Iago is to be sure an extreme instance of the 
kind ; that is to say, of diseased intellectual 
activity, with an almost perfect indifference to 
moral good or evil, or rather with a decided pre- 
ference of the latter, because it falls more readily 
in with his favourite propensity, gives greater 
zest to his thoughts and scope to his actions. 
He is quite or nearly as indifferent to his own 
fate as to that of others ; he runs all risks for a 
trifling and doubtful advantage ; and is himself 
the dupe and victim of his ruling passion — an 
insatiable craving after action of the most difficult 
and dangerous kind. < 6 Our ancient" is a philo- 
sopher, who fancies that a lie that kills has 
more point in it than an alliteration or an anti- 
thesis ; who thinks a fatal experiment on the 
peace of a family a better thing than watching 
the palpitations in, the heart of a flea in a mi- 
croscope ; who plots the ruin of his friends as 
an exercise for his ingenuity, and stabs men in 
the dark to prevent ennui. His gaiety, such as 
it is, arises from the success of his treachery ; 
his ease from the torture he has inflicted on 
others. He is an amateur of tragedy in real 
life ; and instead of employing his invention on 



56 OTHELLO 

imaginary characters, or long -forgotten inci- 
dents, he takes the bolder and more desperate 
course of getting up his plot at home, casts the 
principal parts among his nearest friends and 
connections, and rehearses it in downright earn- 
est, with steady nerves and unabated resolution. 
We will just give an illustration or two. 

One of his most characteristic speeches is that 
immediately after the marriage of Othello. 

' e Roderigo. What a full fortune does the thick lips owe, 
If he can carry her thus ! 

Iago. Call up her father : 
Jtouse him (Othello) make after him, poison his delight. 
Proclaim him in the streets, incense her kinsmen, 
And tho' he in a fertile climate dwell, 
Plague him with flies : Tho' that his joy be joy, 
Yet throw such changes of vexation on it. 
As it may lose some colour." 

In the next passage, his imagination runs riot 
in the mischief he is plotting, and breaks out 
into the wildness and impetuosity of real en- 
thusiasm. 

c ' Roderigo. Here is her father's house : I'll call aloud. 

Iago. Do, with like timourous accent and dire yell, 
As when, by night and negligence, the fire 
Is spied in populous cities." 

One of his most favourite topics, on which 
he is rich indeed, and in descanting on which 
his spleen serves him for a Muse, is the dispro-? 



OTHELLO. 57 

portionate match between Desdemona and the 
Moor. This is a clue to the character of the 
lady which he is by no means ready to part with. 
It is brought forward in the first scene, and he 
recurs to it, when in answer to his insinuations 
against Desdemona, Roderigo says, 

" I cannot believe that in her — she's full of most blest 
conditions. 

Iago. Bless'd fig's end. The wine she drinks is made of 
grapes. If she had been blest, she would never have mar- 
ried the Moor." 

And again with still more spirit and fatal effect 
afterwards, when he turns this very suggestion 
arising in Othello's own breast to her prejudice. 

ff Othello. And yet how nature erring from itself — 
Iago. Aye,, there's the point j — as to be bold with you, 
Not to affect many proposed matches 
Of her own clime, complexion, and degree," &c. 

This is probing to the quick. Iago here turns 
the character of poor Desdemona, as it were, 
inside out. It is certain that nothing but the 
genius of Shakespear could have preserved the 
entire interest and delicacy of the part, and have 
even drawn an additional elegance and dignity 
from the peculiar circumstances in which she is 
placed. — The habitual licentiousness of Iago's 
conversation is not to be traced to the pleasure 
he takes in gross or lascivious images, but to 
his desire of finding out the worst side of every 



58 OTHELLO. 

thing, and of proving himself an over-match for 
appearances. He has none of " the milk of hu- 
man kindness" in his composition. His imagi- 
nation rejects every thing that has not a strong 
infusion of the most unpalatable ingredients ; 
his mind digests only poisons. Virtue or good- 
ness or whatever has the least " relish of salva- 
tion in it," is, to his depraved appetite, sickly 
and insipid: and he even resents the good 
opinion entertained of his own integrity, as if 
it were an affront cast on the masculine sense 
and spirit of his character. Thus at the meeting 
between Othello and Desdemona, he exclaims 
— " Oh, you are well tuned now : but I'll set 
down the pegs that make this music, as honest 
as I am" — his character of bonhommie not sit- 
ting at all easily upon him. In the scenes, 
where he tries to work Othello to his purpose, 
he is proportionably guarded, insidious, dark, 
and deliberate. We believe nothing ever came 
up to the profound dissimulation and dextrous 
artifice of the well-known dialogue in the third 
act, where he first enters upon the execution of 
his design. 

" Iago. My noble lord. 

Othello. What dost thou say, Iago ? 

Iago. Did Michael Cassio, 
When you woo'd my lady, know of your love ? 

Othello. He did from first to last. 
Why dost thou ask * 



OTHELLO. 59 

Iago. But for a satisfaction of my thought, 
No further harm. 

Othello. Why of thy thought, Iago ? 

Iago. I did not think he had been acquainted with it. 

Othello. O yes, and went between us very oft — 

Iago. Indeed ! 

Othello. Indeed ? Ay, indeed. Discern'st thou aught 
of that ? 
Is he not honest ? 

Iago. Honest, my lord? 

Othello. Honest ? Ay, honest. 

Iago. My lord, for aught I know. 

Othello. What do'st thou think ? 

Iago. Think, my lord ! 

Othello. Think, my lord ! Alas, thou echo'st me, 
As if there was some monster in thy thought 
Too hideous to be shewn." — 

The stops and breaks, the deep workings of 
treachery under the mask of love and honesty, 
the anxious watchfulness, the cool earnestness, 
and if we may so say, the passion of hypocrisy 
marked in every line, receive their last finishing 
in that inconceivable burst of pretended indig- 
nation at Othello's doubts of his sincerity. 

" O grace ! O Heaven forgive me ! 

Are you a man ? Have you a soul or sense ? 

God be wi' you ; take mine office. O wretched fool, 

That lov'st to make thine honesty a vice ! 

Oh monstrous world ! take note, take note, O world ! 

To be direct and honest, is not safe. 

I thank you for this profit, and from hence 

I'll love no friend, since love breeds such offence." 



60 OTHELLO. 

If Iago is detestable enough when he has bu- 
siness on his hands and all his engines at work, 
he is still worse when he has nothing to do, and 
we only see into the hollowness of his heart. 
His indifference when Othello falls into a swoon, 
is perfectly diabolical. 

<f Iago. How is it, General ? Have you not hurt your 

head? 
Othello. Dost thou mock me 3 
Iago. I mock you not, by Heaven," &c. 

The part indeed would hardly be tolerated, 
even as a foil to the virtue and generosity 
of the other characters in the play, but for its 
indefatigable industry and inexhaustible re- 
sources, which divert the attention of the spec- 
tator (as well as his own) from the end he has in 
view to the means by which it must be accom- 
plished.— Edmund the Bastard in Lear is some- 
thing of the same character, placed in less pro- 
minent circumstances. Zanga is a vulgar cari- 
cature of it. 



TIMON OF ATHENS 



Timon of Athens always appeared to us to 
be written with as intense a feeling of his sub- 
ject as any one play of Shakespear. It is one 
of the few in which he seems to be in earnest 
throughout, never to trifle nor go out of his way. 
He does not relax in his efforts, nor lose sight 
of the unity of his design. It is the only play 
of our author in which spleen is the predomi- 
nant feeling of the mind. It is as much a satire 
as a play : and contains some of the finest 
pieces of invective possible to be conceived, 
both in the snarling, captious answers of the 
cynic Apemantus, and in the impassioned and 
more terrible imprecations of Timon. The 
latter remind the classical reader of the force 
and swelling impetuosity of the moral decla- 
mations in Juvenal, while the former have all 



62 TIMON OF ATHENS. 

the keenness and caustic severity of the old 
Stoic philosophers. The soul of Diogenes ap- 
pears to have been seated on the lips of Ape- 
mantus. The churlish profession of misanthropy 
in the cynic is contrasted with the profound 
feeling of it in Timon, and also with the soldier- 
like and determined resentment of Alcibiades 
against his countrymen, who have banished him, 
though this forms only an incidental episode in 
the tragedy. 

The fable consists of a single event ; — of the 
transition from the highest pomp and profusion 
of artificial refinement to the most abject state 
of savage life, and privation of all social inter- 
course. The change is as rapid as it is com- 
plete ; nor is the description of the rich and 
generous Timon, banquetting in gilded palaces, 
pampered by every luxury, prodigal of his hos- 
pitality, courted by crowds of flatterers, poets, 
painters, lords, ladies, wh< 



" Follow his strides, his lobbies fill with tendance. 
Rain sacrificial whisperings in his ear ; 
And through him drink the free air" — 

more striking than that of the sudden falling off 
of his friends and fortune, and his naked ex- 
posure in a wild forest digging roots from the 
earth for his sustenance, with a lofty spirit of 
self-denial, and bitter scorn of the world, which 
raise him higher in our esteem than the daz- 



TIMON OF ATHENS. 63 

zling gloss of prosperity could do. He grudges 
himself the means of life, and is only busy in 
preparing his grave. How forcibly is the differ- 
ence between what he was, and what he is 
described in Apemantus's taunting questions, 
when he comes to reproach him with the change 
in his way of life ! 

« What,, think'st thou, 

That the bleak air, thy boisterous chamberlain, 

Will put thy shirt on warm ? will these moist trees 

That have out-liv'd the eagle, page thy heels, 

And skip when thou point'st out ? will the cold brook, 

Candied with ice, caudle thy morning taste 

To cure thy o'er-night's surfeit ? Call the creatures, 

Whose naked natures live in all the spight 

Of wreakful heav'n, whose bare unhoused trunks, 

To the conflicting elements expos' d, 

Answer mere nature, bid them flatter thee." 

The manners are every where preserved with 
distinct truth. The poet and painter are very 
skilfully played off against one another, both 
affecting great attention to the other, and each 
taken up with his own vanity, and the superi- 
ority of his own art. Shakespear has put into 
the mouth of the former a very lively descrip- 
tion of the genius of poetry and of his own in 
particular. 



A thing slipt idly from me. 



Our poesy is as a gum, which issues 

From whence 'tis nourish'd. The fire i' th' flint 



64 tflMON OF ATHENS. 

Shews not till it be struck : our gentle flame 
Provokes itself — and like the current flies 
Each bound it chafes." 

The hollow friendship and shuffling evasions 
of the Athenian lords, their smooth professions 
and pitiful ingratitude, are very satisfactorily ex- 
posed, as well as the different disguises to which 
the meanness of self-love resorts in such cases 
to hide a want of generosity and good faith. The 
lurking selfishness of Apemantus does not pass 
undetected amidst the grossness of his sarcasms 
and his contempt for the pretensions of others. 
Even the two courtezans who accompany Alci- 
biades to the cave of Timon are very characteris- 
tically sketched ; and the thieves who come to 
visit him are also " true men" in their way. — 
An exception to this general picture of selfish 
depravity is found in the old and honest steward 
Flavius, to whom Timon pays a full tribute of 
tenderness. Shakespear was unwilling to draw 
a picture " all over ugly with hypocrisy " He 
owed this character to the good-natured solici- 
tations of his Muse. His mind was well said 
by Ben Jonson to be the " sphere of human- 
ity." 

The moral sententiousness of this play equals 
that of Lord Bacon's Treatise on the Wisdom 
of the Ancients, and is indeed seasoned with 
greater variety. Every topic of contempt or 
indignation is here exhausted ; but while the 



TIMON OF ATHENS. 65 

sordid licentiousness of Apemantus, which turns 
every thing to gall and bitterness, shews only 
the natural virulence of his temper and antipa- 
thy to good or evil alike. Timon does not utter 
an imprecation without betraying the extrava- 
gant workings of disappointed passion, of love 
altered to hate. Apemantus sees nothing good 
in any object, and exaggerates whatever is dis- 
gusting: Timon is tormented with the perpe- 
tual contrast between things and appearances, 
between the fresh, tempting outside and the 
rottenness within, and invokes mischiefs on the 
heads of mankind proportioned to the sense of 
his wrongs and of their treacheries. He im- 
patiently cries out, when he finds the gold, 

ts This yellow slave 
Will knit and break religions ; bless the accurs'd 5 
Make the hoar leprosy ador'd j place thieves, 
And give them title, knee, and approbation, 
With senators on the bench j this is it, 
That makes the wappen'd widow wed again -, 
She, whom the spital-house 
Would cast the gorge at, this embalms and spices 
To tti April day again." 

One of his most dreadful imprecations is 
that which occurs immediately on his leaving 
Athens. 

" Let me look back upon thee, O thou wall, 
That girdlest in those wolves ! Dive in the earth, 
And fence not Athens ! Matrons, turn incontinent : 
F 



66 TIMON OF ATHENS. 

Obedience fail in children -, slaves and fools 

Pluck the grave wrinkled senate from the bench, 

And minister in their steads. To general filths 

Convert o' th' instant green virginity ! 

Do't in your parents' eyes. Bankrupts, hold fast ; 

Rather than render back, out with your knives, 

And cut your trusters' throats ! Bound servants, steal : 

Large-handed robbers your grave masters are, 

And pill by law. Maid, to thy master's bed : 

Thy mistress is o' th' brothel. Son of sixteen, 

Pluck the lin'd crutch from thy old limping sire, 

And with it beat his brains out ! Fear and piety, 

Religion to the Gods, peace, justice, truth, 

Domestic awe, night-rest, and neighbourhood, 

Instructions, manners, mysteries and trades, 

Degrees, observances, customs and laws, 

Decline to your confounding contraries ; 

And let confusion live ! — Plagues, incident to men, 

Your potent and infectious fevers heap 

On Athens, ripe for stroke ! Thou cold sciatica, 

Cripple our senators, that their limbs may halt 

As lamely as their manners ! Lust and liberty 

Creep in the minds and manners of our youth, 

That 'gainst the stream of virtue they may strive, 

And drown themselves in riot ! Itches, blains, 

Sow all th' Athenian bosoms j and their crop 

Be general leprosy : breath infect breath, 

That their society (as their friendship) may 

Be merely poison !" 

Timon is here just as ideal in his passion for 
ill as he had before been in his belief of good. 
Apemantus was satisfied with the mischief ex- 
isting in the world, and with his own ill-na- 



TIMON OF ATHENS. 67 

ture. One of the most decisive intimations of 
Timon's morbid jealousy of appearances is in 
his answer to Apemantus, who asks him, 

" What things in the world can'st thou nearest com- 
pare with thy flatterers? 

Timon. Women nearest : but men, men are the things 
themselves." 

Apemantus, it is said, " loved few things bet- 
ter than to abhor himself." This is not the case 
with Timon, who neither loves to abhor himself 
nor others. All his vehement misanthropy is 
forced, up-hill work. From the slippery turns of 
fortune, from the turmoils of passion and adversi- 
ty, he wishes to sink into the quiet of the grave. 
On that subject his thoughts are intent, on that 
he finds time and place to grow romantic. He 
digs his own grave by the sea-shore ; contrives his 
funeral ceremonies amidst the pomp of desola- 
tion, and builds his mausoleum of the elements. 

f ' Come not to me again j but say to Athens, 
Timon hath made his everlasting mansion 
Upon the beached verge of the salt flood ; 
Which once a-day with his embossed froth 
The turbulent surge shall cover. — Thither come, 
And let my grave-stone be your oracle." 

And again, Alcibiades, after reading his epi- 
taph, says of him, 

" These well express in thee thy latter spirits : 
Though thou abhorred'st in us our human griefs, 



68 TIMON OF ATHENS. 

Scorn'd'st our brain's flow, and those our droplets, which 
From niggard nature fall ; yet rich conceit 
Taught thee to make vast Neptune weep for aye 
On thy low grave" 

thus making the winds his funeral dirge, his 
mourner the murmuring ocean ; and seeking in 
the everlasting solemnities of nature oblivion of 
the transitory splendour of his life-time. 



CORIOLANUS, 



Shakespear has in this play shewn himself 
well versed in history and state-affairs. Corio- 
lanus is a store-house of political common- 
places. Any one who studies it may save him- 
self the trouble of reading Burke's Reflections, 
or Paine's Rights of Man, or the Debates in 
both Houses of Parliament since the French 
Revolution or our own. The arguments for and 
against aristocracy or democracy, on the privile- 
ges of the few and the claims of the many, on liber- 
ty and slavery, power and the abuse of it, peace 
and war, are here very ably handled, with the spi- 
rit of a poet and the acuteness of a philosopher. 
Shakespear himself seems to have had a lean- 
ing to the arbitrary side of the question, perhaps 
from some feeling of contempt for his own ori- 
gin; and to have spared no occasion of baiting 



70 CORIOLANUS. 

the rabble. What he says of them is very true : 
what he says of their betters is also very true, 
though he dwells less upon it. — The cause of 
the people is indeed but little calculated as a 
subject for poetry : it admits of rhetoric, which 
goes into argument and explanation, but it 
presents no immediate or distinct images to the 
mind, " no jutting frieze, buttress, or coigne of 
vantage" for poetry *' to make its pendant bed 
and procreant cradle in." The language of poe- 
try naturally falls in with the language of power. 
The imagination is an exaggerating and exclu- 
sive faculty: it takes from one thing to add to 
another : it accumulates circumstances together 
to give the greatest possible effect to a favourite 
object. The understanding is a dividing and 
measuring faculty : it judges of things, not ac- 
cording to their immediate impression on the 
mind, but according to their relations to one 
another. The one is a monopolizing faculty, 
which seeks the greatest quantity of present ex-* 
citement by inequality and disproportion ; the 
other is a distributive faculty, which seeks the 
greatest quantity of ultimate good, by justice 
and proportion. The one is an aristocratical, 
the other a republican faculty. The principle 
of poetry is a very anti-levelling principle. It 
aims at effect, it exists by contrast. It ad- 
mits of no medium. It is every thing by excess. 
It rises above the ordinary standard of suffer- 



CORIOLANUS. 71 

ings and crimes. It presents a dazzling ap- 
pearance. It shews its head turretted, crown- 
ed, and crested. Its front is gilt and blood- 
stained. Before it " it carries noise, and be- 
hind it tears." It has its altars and its vic- 
tims, sacrifices, human sacrifices. Kings, priests, 
nobles, are its train-bearers, tyrants and slaves 
its executioners.—" Carnage is its daughter." 
• — Poetry is right-royal, It puts the individual 
for the species, the one above the infinite many, 
might before right. A lion hunting a flock of 
sheep or a herd of wild asses is a more poetical 
object than they ; and we even take part with the 
lordly beast, because our vanity Qr some other 
feeling makes us disposed to place purselves in 
the situation of the strongest party. So we feel 
some concern for the poor citizens, of Rome 
when they meet together to compare thejr wants 
and grievances, till Coriolanus comes in and 
with blows and big words drives this s,et of 
wi poor rats," this rascal scum, to their homes and 
beggary before him. There is nothing heroi- 
cal in a multitude of miserable rogues not wish? 
ing to be starved, or complaining that they are 
like to be so : but when a single man comes 
forward to brave their cries and to make them 
submit to the last indignities, from mere pride 
and self-will, our admiration of his prowess is 
immediately converted into contempt for their 



73 CORIOLANUS. 

pusillanimity. The insolence of power is 
stronger than the plea of necessity. The tame 
submission to usurped authority or even the 
natural resistance to it has nothing to excite or 
flatter the imagination : it is the assumption of 
a right to insult or oppress others that carries 
an imposing air of superiority with it. We had 
rather be the oppressor than the oppressed. 
The love of power in ourselves and the admi- 
ration of it in others are both natural to man : 
the one makes him a tyrant, the other a slave. 
Wrong dressed out in pride, pomp, and cir- 
cumstance has more attraction than abstract 
right. — Coriolanus complains of the fickleness 
of the people : yet the instant he cannot gratify 
his pride and obstinacy at their expense, he 
turns his arms against his country. If his 
country was not worth defending, why did he 
build his pride on its defence? He is a con- 
queror and a hero ; he conquers other coun- 
tries, and makes this a plea for enslaving his 
own ; and when he is prevented from doing so, 
he leagues with its enemies to destroy his 
country. He rates the people " as if he were 
a God to punish, and not a man of their infir- 
mity." He scoffs at one of their tribunes for 
maintaining their rights and franchises: " Mark 
you his absolute shall/' 3 not marking his own 
absolute will to take every thing from them, 



CORIOLANUS. 73 

his impatience of the slightest opposition to his 
own pretensions being in proportion to their ar- 
rogance and absurdity. If the great and power- 
ful had the beneficence and wisdom of Gods, 
then all this would have been well : if with a 
greater knowledge of what is good for the peo- 
ple, they had as great a care for their interest 
as they have themselves, if they were seated 
above the world, sympathising with the welfare, 
but not feeling the passions of men, receiving 
neither good nor hurt from them, but bestow- 
ing their benefits as free gifts on them, they 
might then rule over them like another Provi- 
dence. But this is not the case. Coriolanus 
is unwilling that the senate should shew their 
u cares" for the people, lest their " cares" 
should be construed into " fears," to the subver- 
sion of all due authority ; and he is no sooner 
disappointed in his schemes to deprive the peo- 
ple not only of the cares of the state, but of all 
pow r er to redress themselves, than Volumnia is 
made madly to exclaim, 

" Now the red pestilence strike all trades in Rome, 
And occupations perish." 

This is but natural : it is but natural for a 
mother to have more regard for her son than for 
a whole city ; but then the city should be left to 
take some care of itself. The care of the state 
cannot, we here see, be safely entrusted to ma- 



74: CORIOLANUS. 

ternal affection, or to the domestic charities of 
high life. The great have private feelings of 
their own, to which the interests of humanity 
and justice must courtesy. Their interests are 
so far from being the same as those of the com- 
munity, that they are in direct and necessary 
opposition to them ; their power is at the ex- 
pense of our weakness ; their riches of our 
poverty ; their pride of our degradation ; their 
splendour of our wretchedness ; their tyranny 
of our servitude. If they had the superior 
knowledge ascribed to them (which they have 
not) it would only render them so much more 
formidable ; and from Gods would convert them 
into Devils. The whole dramatic moral of Co- 
riolanus is that those who have little shall 
have less, and that those who have much shall 
take all that others have left. The people are 
poor ; therefore they ought to be starved. They 
are slaves ; therefore they ought to be beaten. 
They work hard ; therefore they ought to be 
treated like beasts of burden. They are igno- 
rant ; therefore they ought not to be allowed 
to feel that they want food, or clothing, or rest, 
that they are enslaved, oppressed, and misera- 
ble. This is the logic of the imagination and the 
passions ; which seek to aggrandise what ex- 
cites admiration and to heap contempt on mi- 
sery, to raise power into tyranny, and to make 
tyranny absolute ; to thrust down that which is 



CORIOLANUS. 75 

low still lower, and to make wretches desperate : 
to exalt magistrates into kings, kings into gods ; 
to degrade subjects to the rank of slaves, and 
slaves to the condition of brutes. The history of 
mankind is a romance, a mask, a tragedy, con- 
structed upon the principles of poetical justice; 
it is a noble or royal hunt, in which what is sport 
to the few, is death to the many, and in which 
the spectators halloo and encourage the strong 
to set upon the weak, and cry havoc in the 
chase, though they do not share in the spoil. 
We may depend upon it that what men delight 
to read in books, they will put in practice in 
reality. 

One of the most natural traits in this play is 
the difference of the interest taken in the suc- 
cess of Coriolanus by his wife and mother. The 
one is only anxious for his honour ; the other is 
fearful for his life. 

f Volumnia. Methinks I hither hear your husband's 
drum : 
I see him pluck Aufidius down by th' hair : 
Methinks I see him stamp thus — and call thus — 
Come on, ye cowards 5 ye were got in fear 
Though you were born in Rome j his bloody brow 
With his mail'd hand then wiping, forth he goes 
Like to a harvest man, that's task'd to mow 
Or all, or lose his hire. 

Virgilia. His bloody brow ! Oh Jupiter, no blood. 

Volumnia. Away, you fool ; it more becomes a man 
Than gilt his trophy. The breast of Hecuba, 



76 CORIOLANUS. 

When she did suckle Hector, look'd not lovelier 
Than Hector's forehead, when it spit forth blood 
At Grecian swords contending." 

When she hears the trumpets that proclaim 
her son's return, she says in the true spirit of a 
Roman matron, 

" These are the ushers of Martius : before him 
He carries noise, and behind him he leaves tears. 
Death, that dark spirit, in's nervy arm doth lie, 
Which being advanc'd, declines, and then men die." 

Coriolanus himself is a complete character : 
his love of reputation, his contempt of popular 
opinion, his pride and modesty are consequences 
of each other. His pride consists in the inflexi- 
ble sternness of his will : his love of glory is a 
determined desire to bear down all opposition, 
and to extort the admiration both of friends and 
foes. His contempt for popular favour, his un- 
willingness to hear his own praises, spring from 
the same source. He cannot contradict the 
praises that are bestowed upon him ; therefore 
he is impatient at hearing them. He would 
enforce the good opinion of others by his ac- 
tions, but does not want their acknowledgments 
in words. 

" Pray now, no more : my mother, 
Who has a charter to extol her blood, 
When she does praise me, grieves me." 



CORIOLANUS. 77 

His magnanimity is of the same kind. He 
admires in an enemy that courage which he 
honours in himself: he places himself on the 
hearth of Aufidius with the same confidence 
that he would have met him in the field, and 
feels that by putting himself in his power, he 
takes from him all temptation for using it against 
him. 

In the title-page of Coriolanus, it is said 
at the bottom of the Dramatis Personae, " The 
whole history exactly followed, and many of 
the principal speeches copied from the life of 
Coriolanus in Plutarch." It will be interest- 
ing to our readers to see how far this is the case. 
Two of the principal scenes, those between Co- 
riolanus and Aufidius and between Coriolanus 
and his mother, are thus given in Sir Thomas 
North's translation of Plutarch, dedicated to 
Queen Elizabeth, 1579. The first is as fol- 
lows : — 

<( It was even twilight when he entered the city of An- 
tium, and many people met him in the streets, but no man 
knew him. So he went directly to Tullus Aufidius' house, 
and when he came thither, he got him up straight to the 
chimney-hearth, and sat him down, and spake not a word 
to any man, his face all muffled over. They of the house 
spying him, wondered what he should be, and yet they 
durst not bid him rise. For ill-favouredly muffled and dis- 
guised as he was, yet there appeared a certain majesty in 
his countenance and in his silence : whereupon they went to 
Tullus, who was at supper, to tell him of the strange dis* 



78 CORIOLANUS. 

guising of this man. Tullus rose presently from the board, 
and coming towards him, asked him what he was, and 
wherefore he came. Then Martins unmuffled himself, and 
after he had paused awhile, making no answer, he said 
unto himself, If thou knowest me not yet, Tullus, and see- 
ing me, dost not perhaps believe me to be the man I am 
indeed, I must of necessity discover myself to be that I am. 
' I am Caius Martius, who hath done to thyself particu- 
f larly, and to all the Volsces generally, great hurt and 
< mischief, which I cannot deny for my surname of Corio- 
f lanus that I bear. For I never had other benefit nor re- 
( compence of the true and painful service I have done, and 
( the extreme dangers I have been in, but this only sur- 
( name : a good memory and witness of the malice and 
' displeasure thou shouldest bear me. Indeed the name 
' only remaineth with me ; for the rest, the envy and cru- 
f elty of the people of Rome have taken from me, by the 
' sufferance of the dastardly nobility and magistrates, who 
f have forsaken me, and let me be banished by the people. 
' This extremity hath now driven me to come as a poor 
c suitor, to take thy chimney-hearth, not of any hope I 
' have to save my life thereby. For if I had feared death, 
' I would not have come hither to put myself in hazard : 
s but pricked forward with desire to be revenged of them 
' that thus have banished me, which now I do begin, in 
' putting my person into the hands of their enemies. 
' Wherefore if thou hast any heart to be wrecked of the 
* injuries thy enemies have done thee, speed thee now, 
( and let my misery serve thy turn, and so use it as my 
1 service may be a benefit to the Volsces : promising thee, 
' that I will fight with better good will for all you, than I 
s did when I was against you, knowing that they fight 
{ more valiantly who know the force of the enemy, than 
e such as have never proved it. And if it be so that thou 
f dare not, and that thou art weary to prove fortune any 



CORIOLANUS. 79 

* more, then am I also weary to live any longer. And it 
f were no wisdom in thee to save the life of him who hath 

* been heretofore thy mortal enemy, and whose service now 

* can nothing help, nor pleasure thee.' Tullus hearing 
what he said, was a marvellous glad man, and taking 
him by the hand, he said unto him : ■' Stand up, O Mar- 
' tius, and be of good cheer, for in proffering thyself unto 
' us, thou doest us great honour : and by this means thou 
' mayest hope also of greater things at all the Volsces* 
' hands.' So he feasted him for that time, and entertained 
him in the honourablest manner he could, talking with him 
of no other matter at that present : but within few days 
after, they fell to consultation together in what sort they 
should begin their wars." 

The meeting between Coriolanus and his 
mother is also nearly the same as in the play. 

<( Now was Martius set then in the chair of state, with 
all the honours of a general, and when he had spied the 
women coming afar off, he marvelled what the matter 
meant : but afterwards knowing his wife which came fore- 
most, he determined at the first to persist in his obstinate 
and inflexible rancour. But overcome in the end with na- 
tural affection, and being altogether altered to see them, 
his heart would not serve him to tarry their coming to his 
chair, but coming down in haste, he went to meet them, 
and first he kissed his mother, and embraced her a pretty 
while, then his wife and little children. And nature so 
wrought with him, that the tears fell from his eyes, and 
he could not keep himself from making much of them, but 
yielded to the affection of his blood, as if he had been vio- 
lently carried with the fury of a most swift-running stream. 
After he had thus lovingly received them, and perceiving 
that his mother Volumnia would begin to speak to him, he 



80 CORIOLANUS. 

called the chiefest of the council of, the Volsces to hear what 
she would say. Then she spake in this sort : ' If we held 
f our peace, my son, and determined not to speak, the 
e state of our poor bodies, and present sight of our rai- 
c ment, would easily betray to thee what life we have led 
e at home, since thy exile and abode abroad ; but think 
r now with thyself, how much more unfortunate than all 
' the women living, we are come hither, considering that 
c the sight which should be most pleasant to all others to 
f behold, spiteful fortune had made most fearful to us : 
c making myself to see my son, and my daughter here her 
f husband, besieging the walls of his native country : so as 
f that which is the only comfort to all others in their ad- 
e versity and misery, to pray unto the Gods, and to call to 
' them for aid, is the only thing which plungeth us into 

* most deep perplexity. For we cannot, alas, together 

* pray, both for victory to our country, and for safety of 
f thy life also : but a world of grievous curses, yea more 
' than any mortal enemy can heap upon us, are forcibly 

* wrapped up in our prayers. For the bitter sop of most hard 
' choice is offered thy wife and children, to forego one of 
' the two : either to lose the person of thyself, or the 
f nurse of tneir native country. For myself, my son, I am 
' determined not to tarry till fortune in my lifetime do 
( make an end of this war. For if I cannot persuade the 

' rather to do good unto both parties, than to overthrow 
1 and destroy the one, preferring love and nature before 
r the malice and calamity of wars, thou shalt see, my son, 
' and trust unto it, thou shalt no sooner march forward to 
{ assault thy country, but thy foot shall tread upon thy 
' mother's womb, that brought thee first into this world. 
s And I may not defer to see the day, either that my son 
' be led prisoner in triumph by his natural countrymen, or 
{ that he himself do triumph of them, and of his natural 
e country. For if it were so, that my request tended to 



CORIOLANUS. 81 

c save thy country, in destroying the Volsces, I must con- 
f fess, thou wouldest hardly and doubtfully resolve on that. 
' For as to destroy thy natural country, it is altogether un- 
i meet and unlawful, so were it not just and less honour- 
f; able to betray those that put their trust in thee. But 
c my only demand consisteth, to make a goal delivery of 
f all evils, which delivereth equal benefit and safety, both 
c to the one and the other, but most honourable for the 
f Volsces. For it shall appear, that having victory in their 
e hands, they have of special favour granted us singular 
s graces, peace and amity, albeit themselves have no less 
' part of both than we. Of which good, if so it came to 
< pass, thyself is the only author, and so hast thou the only 
( honour. But if it fail, and fall out contrary, thyself alone 
c deservedly shalt carry the shameful reproach and burthen 
e of either party. So, though the end of war be uncertain, 
c yet this notwithstanding is most certain, that if it be thy 

* chance to conquer, this benefit shalt thou reap of thy 
c goodly conquest, to be chronicled the plague and de- 
' stroyer of thy country. And if fortune overthrow thee, 
c then the world will say, that through desire to revenge 
' thy private injuries, thou hast for ever undone thy good 
' friends, who did most lovingly and courteously receive 
e thee.' Martius gave good ear unto his mother's words, 
without interrupting her speech at all, and after she had 
said what she would, he held his peace a pretty while, and 
answered not a word. Hereupon she began again to speak 
unto ,him, and said : ' My son, why dost thou not answer 
( me } Dost thou think it good altogether to give place unto 
' thy choler and desire of revenge, and thinkest thou it 
( not honesty for thee to grant thy mother's request in so 
f weighty a cause? Dost thou take it honourable for a 
f nobleman, to remember the wrongs and injuries done 
( him, and dost not in like case think it an honest noble- 
' man's part to be thankful for the goodness that parents 

* do shew to their children, acknowledging the duty and 

G 



82 CORIOLANUS. 

■ reverence they ought to bear unto them ? No man living 
e is more bound to shew himself thankful in all parts and 
c respects than thyself $ who so universally shewest all in- 
c gratitude. Moreover, niy son, thou hast sorely taken of 
' thy country., exacting grievous payments upon them, in 
i revenge of the injuries offered thee ; besides, thou hast 
f not hitherto shewed thy poor mother any courtesy. And 
f therefore it is not only honest, but due unto me, that 
' without compulsion I should obtain my so just and rea- 
' sonable request of thee. But since by reason I cannot 
' persuade thee to it, to what purpose do I defer my last 
e hope ?' And with these words herself, his wife and chil- 
dren, fell down upon their knees before him : Martius 
seeing that, could refrain no longer, but went straight and 
lifted her up, crying out, ' Oh mother, what have you 
c done to me ?' And holding her hard by the right hand, 
' Oh mother,' said he, ( you have won a happy victory for 
' your country, but mortal and unhappy for your son : for 
f I see myself vanquished by you alone.' These words 
being spoken openly, he spake a little apart with his mother 
and wife, and then let them return again to Rome, for so 
they did request him -, and so remaining in the camp that 
night, the next morning he dislodged, and marched home- 
ward unto the Volsces' country again." 

Shakespear has, in giving a dramatic form to 
this passage, adhered very closely and properly 
to the text. He did not think it necessary to 
improve upon the truth of nature. Several of 
the scenes in Julius Ccesar, particularly Portia's 
appeal to the confidence of her husband by shew- 
ing him the wound she had given herself, and 
the appearance of the ghost of Caesar to Brutus, 
are, in like manner, taken from the historv. 



TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. 



Ihis is one of the most loose and desultory 
of our author's plays : it rambles on just as it 
happens, but it overtakes, together with some 
indifferent matter, a prodigious number of fine 
things in its way. Troilus himself is no cha- 
racter : he is merely a common lover : but Cres- 
sida and her uncle Pandarus are hit off with 
proverbial truth. By the speeches given to the 
leaders of the Grecian host, Nestor, Ulysses, 
Agamemnon, Achilles, Shakespear seems to 
have known them as well as if he had been a 
spy sent by the Trojans into the enemy's camp 
— to say nothing of their being very lofty exam- 
ples of didactic eloquence. The following is 
a very stately and spirited declamation : 

Ulysses. Troy, yet upon her basis, had been down, 
And the great Hector's sword had lack'd a master j, 



84 TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. 

But for these instances. 

The specialty of rule hath been neglected. 

*********** 

The heavens themselves, the planets, and this center, 

Observe degree, priority, and place, 

Insisture, course, proportion, season, form, 

Office, and custom, in all line of order : 

And therefore is the glorious planet, Sol, 

In noble eminence, enthron'd and spher'd 

Amidst the other, whose med'cinable eye 

Corrects the ill aspects of planets evil, 

And posts, like the commandment of a king, 

Sans check, to good and bad. But, when the planets. 

In evil mixture to disorder wander, 

What plagues and what portents ? what mutinies ? 

What raging of the sea ? shaking of earth ? 

Commotion in the winds ? frights, changes, horrors, 

Divert and crack, rend and deracinate 

The unity and married calm of states 

Quite from their fixture ! O, when degree is shaken , 

(Which is the ladder to all high designs) 

The enterprize is sick ! How could communities, 

Degrees in schools, and brotherhoods in cities, 

Peaceful commerce from dividable shores, 

The primogenitive and due of birth, 

Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels, 

(But by degree) stand in authentic place ? 

Take but degree away, untune that string, 

And hark what discord follows ! each thing meets 

In mere oppugnancy. The bounded waters 

Would lift their bosoms higher than the shores, 

And make a sop of all this solid globe : 

Strength would be lord of imbecility, 

And the rude son would strike his father dead : 

Force would be right ; or rather, right and wrong 



TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. 85 

(Between whose endless jar Justice resides) 

Would lose their names, and so would Justice too. 

Then every thing includes itself in power, 

Power into will, will into appetite j 

And appetite (an universal wolf, 

So doubly seconded with will and power) 

Must make perforce an universal prey, 

And last, eat up himself. Great Agamemnon, 

This chaos, when degree is suffocate, 

Follows the choking : 

And this neglection of degree it is, 

That by a pace goes backward, in a purpose 

It hath to climb. The general's disdained 

By him one step below ; he, by the next ; 

That next, by him beneath : so every step, 

Exampled by the first pace that is sick 

Of his superior, grows to an envious fever 

Of pale and bloodless emulation j 

And 'tis this fever that keeps Troy on foot, 

Not her own sinews. To end a tale of length, 

Troy in our weakness lives, not in her strength." 

It cannot be said of Shakespear, as was said 
of some one, that he was " without overflowing 
full." He was full, even to o'erflowing. He 
gave heaped measure, running over. This was 
his greatest fault. He was only in danger " of 
losing distinction in his thoughts" (to borrow 
his own expression) 

** As doth a battle when they charge on heaps 
The enemy flying." 

There is another passage, the speech of Ulys- 
ses to Achilles, shewing him the thankless na- 



S6 TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. 

ture of popularity, which has a still greater 
depth of moral observation and richness of il- 
lustration than the former. It is long, but worth 
the quoting. The sometimes giving an entire 
extract from the unacted plays of our author 
may with one class of readers have almost the 
use of restoring a lost passage ; and may serve 
to convince another class of critics, that the poet's 
genius was not confined to the production of 
stage effect by preternatural means. — 

' ' Ulysses. Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back* 
Wherein he puts alms for Oblivion ; 
A great-siz'd monster of ingratitudes : 
Those scraps are good deeds past, 
Which are devour'd as fast as they are made, 
Forgot as soon as done : Persev'rance, dear my lord., 
Keeps Honour bright : to have done, is to hang 
Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail 
In monumental mockery. Take the instant way ; 
For Honour travels in a strait so narrow, 
Where one but goes abreast ; keep then the path. 
For Emulation hath a thousand sons, 
That one by one pursue ; if you give way, 
Or hedge aside from the direct forth -right, 
Like to an entered tide, they all rush by^ 

And leave you hindmost ; 

Or, like a gallant horse fall'n in first rank; 

O'er-run and trampled on : then what they do in present, 

Tho' less than yours in past, must o'ertop yours : 

For Time is like a fashionable host, 

That slightly shakes his parting guest by th' hand, 

And with his arms out-stretch' d, as he would fly, 

Crrasps in the comer : the Welcome ever smiles. 



TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. 87 

And Farewel goes out sighing. O, let not virtue seek 
Remuneration for the thing it was j for beauty, wit, 
High birth, vigour of bone, desert in service, 
Love, friendship, charity, are subjects ajl 
To envious and calumniating time : 
One touch of nature makes the whole world kin. 
That all, with one consent, praise new-born gauds, 
Tho' they are made and moulded of things past. 
The present eye praises the present object. 
Then marvel not, thou great and complete man, 
That all the Greeks begin to worship Ajax ; 
Since things in motion sooner catch the eye, 
Than what not stirs. The cry went out on thee^ 
And still it might, and yet it may again, 
If thou would' st not entomb thyself alive, 
And case thy reputation in thy tent." — ■ 

The throng of images in the above lines is 
prodigious ; and though they sometimes jostle 
against one another, they every where raise 
and carry on the feeling, which is metaphysi- 
cally true and profound. The debates between 
jhe Trojan chiefs on the restoring of Helen are 
full of knowledge of human motives and cha- 
racter. Troilus enters well into the philosophy 
of war, when he says in answer to something 
that falls from Hector, 

" Why there you touch'd the life of our design : 
Were it not glory that we more affected, 
Than the performance of our heaving spleens, 
I would not wish a drop of Trojan blood 
Spent more in her defence. But, worthy Hector> 



88 TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. 

She is a theme of honour and renown, 

A spur to valiant and magnanimous deeds.'' 

The character of Hector, in the few slight in- 
dications which appear of it, is made very amia- 
ble. His death is sublime, and shews in a 
striking light the mixture of barbarity and hero- 
ism of the age. The threats of Achilles are 
fatal ; they carry their own means of execution 
with them. 

" Come here about me, you my Myrmidons, 
Mark what I say. — Attend me where I wheel : 
Strike not a stroke, but keep yourselves in breath 5 
And when I have the bloody Hector found, 
Empale him with your weapons round about : 
In fellest manner execute your arms. 
Follow me, sirs, and my proceeding eye." 

He then finds Hector and slays him, as if he 
had been hunting down a wild beast. There is 
something revolting as well as terrific in the fe- 
rocious coolness with which he singles out his 
prey : nor does the splendour of the atchieve- 
ment reconcile us to the cruelty of the means. 

The characters of Cressida and Pandarus are 
very amusing and instructive. The disinte- 
rested willingness of Pandarus to serve his friend 
in an affair which lies next his heart is immedi- 
ately brought forward. " Go thy way, Troilus, 
go thy way ; had I a sister were a grace, or a 
daughter were a goddess, he should tal^e his 



TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. 89 

choice. O admirable man ! Paris, Paris is dirt 
to him, and I warrant Helen, to change, would 
give money to boot." This is the language he 
addresses to his niece : nor is she much behind- 
hand in coming into the plot. Her head is as 
light and fluttering as her heart. " It is the pret- 
tiest villain, she fetches her breath so short as a 
new-ta'en sparrow." Both characters are origi- 
nals, and quite different from what they are in 
Chaucer. In Chaucer, Cressida is represented as 
a grave, sober, considerate personage (a widow — 
he cannot tell her age, nor whether she has chil- 
dren or no) who has an alternate eye to her 
character, her interest, and her pleasure: Shake- 
spear's Cressida is a giddy girl, an unpractised 
jilt, who falls in love with Troilus, as she after- 
wards deserts him, from mere levity and thought- 
lessness of temper. She may be wooed and won 
to any thing and from any thing, at a moment's 
warning : the other knows very well what she 
would be at, and sticks to it, and is more go- 
verned by substantial reasons than by caprice or 
vanity. Pandarus again, in Chaucer's story, is a 
friendly sort of go-between, tolerably busy, offici- 
ous, and forward in bringing matters to bear : but 
in Shakespear he has " a stamp exclusive and pro- 
fessional :" he wears the badge of his trade ; he is 
a regular knight of the game. The difference of 
the manner in which the subject is treated arises 
perhaps less from intention, than from the differ- 



90 TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. 

ent genius of the two poets. There is no double 
entendre in the characters of Chaucer: they are 
either quite serious or quite comic. In Shake- 
spear the ludicrous and ironical are constantly 
blended with the stately and the impassioned. 
We see Chaucer's characters as they saw them- 
selves, not as they appeared to others or might 
have appeared to the poet. He is as deeply im- 
plicated in the affairs of his personages as they 
could be themselves. He had to go a long 
journey with each of them, and became a kind 
of necessary confidant. There is little relief, or 
light and shade in his pictures. The con- 
scious smile is not seen lurking under the brow 
of grief or impatience. Every thing with him 
is intense and continuous — a working out of 
what went before. — Shakespear never committed 
himself to his characters. He trifled, laughed, 
or wept with them as he chose. He has no preju- 
dices for or against them ; and it seems a matter 
of perfect indifference whether he shall be in jest 
or earnest. According to him " the web of our 
lives is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together/' 
His genius was dramatic, as Chaucer's was his- 
torical. He saw both sides of a question, the 
different views taken of it according to the dif- 
ferent interests of the parties concerned, and he 
was at once an actor and spectator in the scene. 
If any thing, he is too various and flexible ; too 
full of transitions, of glancing lights, of salient 



TROILUS AND CRESS-IDA. 91 

points. If Chaucer followed up his subject too 
doggedly, perhaps Shakespear was too volatile 
and heedless. The Muse's wing too often lifted 
him off his feet. He made infinite excursions 
to the right and the left. 



He hath done 



Mad and fantastic execution, 
Engaging and redeeming of himself 
With such a careless force and forceless care, 
As if that luck in very spite of cunning 
Bad him win all." 

Chaucer attended chiefly to the real and na^ 
tural, that is, to the involuntary and inevitable 
impressions on the mind in given circumstances: 
Shakespear exhibited also the possible and the 
fantastical, — not only what things are in them- 
selves, but whatever they might seem to be, 
their different reflections, their endless com- 
binations. He lent his fancy, wit, invention, to 
others, and borrowed their feelings in return. 
Chaucer excelled in the force of habitual senti- 
ment ; Shakespear added to it every variety of 
passion, every suggestion of thought or acci- 
dent. Chaucer described external objects with 
the eye of a painter, or he might be said to have 
embodied them with the hand of a sculptor, 
every part is so thoroughly made out, and tan- 
gible : — Shakespear's imagination threw over 
them a lustre 

— " Prouder than when blue Iris bends.- 



92 TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. 

Every thing in Chaucer has a downright rea- 
lity. A simile or a sentiment is as if it were 
given in upon evidence. In Shakespear the 
commonest matter-of-fact has a romantic grace 
about it ; or seems to float with the breath of 
imagination in a freer element. No one could 
have more depth of feeling or observation than 
Chaucer, but he wanted resources of invention 
to lay open the stores of nature or the human 
heart with the same radiant light, that Shake- 
spear has done. However fine or profound the 
thought, we know what was coming, whereas 
the effect of reading Shakespear is " like the eye 
of vassalage encountering majesty." Chaucer's 
mind was consecutive, rather than discursive. 
He arrived at truth through a certain process ; 
Shakespear saw every thing by intuition. Chau- 
cer had great variety of power, but he could do 
only one thing at once. He set himself to work 
on a particular subject. His ideas were kept 
separate, labelled, ticketed and parcelled out 
in a set form, in pews and compartments by 
themselves. They did not play into one ano- 
ther's hands. They did not re-act upon one 
another, as the blower's breath moulds the yield- 
ing glass. There is something hard and dry in 
them. What is the most wonderful thing in 
Shakespear's faculties is their excessive socia- 
bility, and how they gossipped and compared 
notes together. 



TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. 93 

We must conclude this criticism ; and we will 
do it with a quotation or two. One of the 
most beautiful passages in Chaucer's tale is the 
description of Cresseide's first avowal of her 
love. 

" And as the new abashed nightingale, 
That stinteth first when she beginneth sing, 
When that she heareth any herde's tale, 
Or in the hedges any wight stirring, 
And, after, sicker doth her voice outring j 
Right so Cresseide, when that her dread stent, 
Opened her heart, and told him her intent." 

See also the two next stanzas, and particular- 
ly that divine one beginning 

ce Her armes small, her back both straight and soft/' &c. 

Compare this with the following speech of 
Troilus to Cressida in the play. 

fC O, that I thought it could be in a woman ; 
And if it can, I will presume in you, 
To feed for aye her lamp and flame of love, 
To keep her constancy in plight and youth, 
Out-living beauties out-ward, with a mind 
That doth renew swifter than blood decays. 
Or, that persuasion could but thus convince me, 
That my integrity and truth to you 
Might be affronted with the match and weight 
Of such a winnow' d purity in love ; 
How were I then uplifted ! But alas, 
I am as true as Truth's simplicity, 
And simpler than the infancy of Truth." 



94 TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. 

These passages may not seem very character- 
istic at first sight, though we think they are so. 
We will give two, that cannot be mistaken. 
Patroclus says to Achilles, 

" Rouse yourself j and the weak wanton Cupid 



Shall from your neck unloose his amorous fold. 
And like a dew-drop from the lion's mane, 
Be shook to air." 

Troilus, addressing the God of Day on the 
approach of the morning that parts him from 
Cressida, says with much scorn, 

" What! proffer'st thou thy light here for to sell? 
Go, sell it them that smalle" sele*s grave." 

If nobody but Shakespear could have written 
the former, nobody but Chaucer would have 
thought of the latter. — Chaucer was the most 
literal of poets, as Richardson was of prose- 
writers. 



ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA 



This is a very noble play. Though not in the 
first class of Shakespear's productions, it stands 
next to them, and is, we think, the finest of 
his historical plays, that is, of those in which 
he made poetry the organ of history, and as- 
sumed a certain tone of character and sentiment, 
in conformity to known facts, instead of trusting 
to his observations of general nature or to the 
unlimited indulgence of his own fancy. What 
he has added to the history, is upon a par with 
it. His genius was, as it were, a match for his- 
tory as well as nature, and could grapple at will 
with either. This play is full of that pervading 
comprehensive power by which the poet could 
always make himself master of time and circum- 
stances. It presents a fine picture of Roman 
pride and Eastern magnificence : and in the 



96 ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA. 

struggle between the two, the empire of the 
world seems suspended, " like the swan's down- 
feather, 

" That stands upon the swell at full of tide, 
And neither way inclines." 

The characters breathe, move, and live. Shake- 
spear does not stand reasoning on what his cha- 
racters would do or say, but at once becomes 
them, and speaks and acts for them. He does 
not present us with groups of stage-puppets or 
poetical machines making set speeches on hu- 
man life, and acting from a calculation of ostensi- 
ble motives, but he brings living men and women 
on the scene, who speak and act from real feelings, 
according to the ebbs and flows of passion, with- 
out the least tincture of the pedantry of logic or 
rhetoric. Nothing is made out by inference and 
analogy, by climax and antithesis, but every thing 
takes place just as it would have done in reality, 
according to the occasion. — The character of 
Cleopatra is a master-piece. What an extreme 
contrast it affords to Imogen ! One would think 
it almost impossible for the same person to have 
drawn both. She is voluptuous, ostentatious, 
conscious, boastful of her charms, haughty, ty- 
rannical, fickle. The luxurious pomp and gor- 
geous extravagance of the Egyptian queen are 
displayed in all their force and lustre, as well as 
the irregular grandeur of the soul of Mark An- 



ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA. 97 

tony. Take only the first four lines that they 
speak as an example of the regal style of love- 
making. 

" Cleopatra. If it be love, indeed, tell me how much ? 

Antony. There's beggary in the love that can be reck- 
on' d. 

Cleopatra. I'll set a bourn how far to be belov'd. 

Antony. Then must thou needs find out new heav'n, 
new earth." 

The rich and poetical description of her per- 
son, beginning— 

'* The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne, 
Burnt on the water j the poop was beaten gold, 
Purple the sails, and so perfumed, that 
The winds were love-sick" — 

seems to prepare the way for, and almost to jus- 
tify the subsequent infatuation of Antony when 
in the sea-fight at Actium, he leaves the battle, 
and " like a doating mallard" follows her flying 
sails. 

Few things in Shakespear (and we know of 
nothing in any other author like them) have 
more of that local truth of imagination and cha- 
racter than the passage in which Cleopatra is 
represented conjecturing what were the employ- 
ments of Antony in his absence. " He's speak- 
ing now, or murmuring — Where's my serpent of 
old Nile?" Or again, when she says to Antony, 
after the defeat at Actium, and his summoning 

H 



98 ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA. 

up resolution to risk another fight — " It is my 
birth-day; 1 had thought to have held it poor; 
but since my lord is Antony again, I will be 
Cleopatra." Perhaps the finest burst of all is 
Antony's rage after his final defeat when he 
comes in, and surprises the messenger of Csesar 
kissing her hand— 

(< To let a fellow that will take rewards, 
And say, God quit you, be familiar with, 
My play-fellow, your hand -, this kingly seal, 
And plighter of high hearts." 

It is no wonder that he orders him to be whip- 
ped ; but his low condition is not the true reason : 
there is another feeling which lies deeper, though 
Antony's pride would not let him shew it, except 
by his rage ; he suspects the fellow to be Caesar's 
proxy. 

Cleopatra's whole character is the triumph of 
the voluptuous, of the love of pleasure and the 
power of giving it, over every other considera- 
tion. Octavia is a dull foil to her, and Fulvia a 
shrew and shrill-tongued. What a picture do 
those lines give of her — 

<c Age cannot wither her, nor custom steal 
Her infinite variety. Other women cloy 
The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry 
Where most she satisfies. 

What a spirit and fire in her conversation 
with Antony's messenger who brings her the 



ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA. 99 

unwelcome news of his marriage with Octavia ! 
How all the pride of beauty and of high rank 
breaks out in her promised reward to him — 

" There's gold, and here 



My bluest veins to kiss !" — 

She had great and unpardonable faults, but 

the beautv of her death almost redeems them. 

%/ 

She learns from the depth of despair the strength 
of her affections. She keeps her queen-like 
state in the last disgrace, and her sense of the 
pleasurable in the last moments of her life. She 
tastes a luxury in death. After applying the 
asp, she says with fondness — 

<c Dost thou not see my baby at my breast, 
That sucks the nurse asleep ? 
As sweet as balm, as soft as air, as gentle. 
Oh Antony!" 

It is worth while to observe that Shakespear 
has contrasted the extreme magnificence of the 
descriptions in this play with pictures of ex- 
treme suffering and physical horror, not less 
striking — partly perhaps^to excuse the effemi- 
nacy of Mark Antony to whom they are re- 
lated as having happened, but more to preserve 
a certain balance of feeling in the mind. Caesar 
says, hearing of his conduct at the court of 
Cleopatra, 



Antony, 



Leave thy lascivious wassels. When thou once 



100 ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA. 

Wert beaten from Mutina, where thou slew'st 

Hirtius and J*ansa, consuls, at thy heel 

Did famine follow, whom thou fought' st against, 

Though daintily brought up, with patience more 

Than savages could suffer. Thou did'st drink 

The stale of horses, and the gilded puddle 

Which beast would cough at. Thy palate then did deign 

The roughest berry on the rudest hedge, 

Yea, like the stag, when snow the pasture sheets, 

The barks of trees thou browsed'st. On the Alps, 

It is reported, thou did'st eat strange flesh, 

Which some did die to look on : and all this, 

It wounds thine honour, that I speak it now, 

Was borne so like a soldier, that thy cheek 

So much as lank'd not." 

The passage after Antony's defeat by Augus- 



tus where he is made to say 



<e Yes, yes ; he at Philippi kept 
His sword e'en like a dancer ; while I struck 
The lean and wrinkled Cassius, and 'twas I 
That the mad Brutus ended" — 

is one of those fine retrospections which shew 
us the winding and eventful march of human 
life. The jealous attention which has been paid 
to the unities both of time and place has taken 
away the principle of perspective in the drama, 
and all the interest which objects derive from 
distance, from contrast, from privation, from 
change of fortune, from long-cherished passion ; 
and contracts our view of life from a strange and 
romantic dream, long, obscure, and infinite, into 



ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA. 101 

a smartly contested, three hours' inaugural dis- 
putation on its merits by the different candi- 
dates for theatrical applause. 

The latter scenes of Antony and Cleopa- 
tra are full of the changes of accident and pas- 
sion. Success and defeat follow one another 
with startling rapidity. Fortune sits upon her 
wheel more blind and giddy than usual. This 
precarious state and the approaching dissolution 
of his greatness are strikingly displayed in the 
dialogue between Antony and Eros. 

" Antony. Eros, thou yet behold' st me ? 

Eros. Ay, noble lord. 

Antony. Sometime we see a cloud that's dragonish, 
A vapour sometime, like a bear or lion, 
A towered citadel, a pendant rock, 
A forked mountain, or blue promontory 
With trees upon't, that nod unto the world 
And mock our eyes with air. Thou hast seen these signs, 
They are black vesper's pageants. 

Eros. Ay, my lord. 

Antony. That which is now a horse, even with a thought 
The rack dislimns, and makes it indistinct 
As water is in water. 

Eros. It does, my lord* 

Antony. My good knave, Eros, now thy captain is 
Even such a body," &c. 

This is, without doubt, one of the finest pieces 
of poetry in Shakespear. The splendour of the 
imagery, the semblance of reality, the lofty range 
of picturesque objects hanging over the world, 



102 ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA. 

their evanescent nature, the total uncertainty of 
what is left behind, are just like the mouldering 
schemes of human greatness. It is finer than 
Cleopatra's passionate lamentation over his fallen 
grandeur, because it is more dim, unstable, un- 
substantial. Antony's headstrong presumption 
and infatuated determination to yield to Cleopa- 
tra's wishes to fight by sea instead of land, meet 
a merited punishment ; and the extravagance of 
his resolutions, increasing with the desperateness 
of his circumstances, is well commented upon 
by CEnobarbus. 

- <e I see men judgements are 



A parcel of their fortunes, and things outward 
Do draw the inward quality after them 
To suffer all alike." 

The repentance of CEnobarbus after his trea- 
chery to his master is the most affecting part of 
the play. He cannot recover from the blow 
which Antony's generosity gives him, and he 
dies broken-hearted " a master-leaver and a 
fugitive." 

Shakespear's genius has spread over the whole 
play a richness like the overflowing of the Nile. 



HAMLET. 



This is that Hamlet the Dane, whom we read 
of in our youth, and whom we seem almost to 
remember in our after-years ; he who made that 
famous soliloquy on life, who gave the advice 
to the players, who thought " this goodly frame, 
the earth, a steril promontory, and this brave 
o'er-hanging firmament, the air, this majesti- 
cal roof fretted with golden fire, a foul and pes- 
tilent congregation of vapours ;" whom " man 
delighted not, nor woman neither;" he who 
talked with the grave-diggers, and moralised on 
Yorick's skull; the school-fellow of Rosencraus 
and Guildenstern at Wittenberg ; the friend of 
Horatio ; the lover of Ophelia ; he that was mad 
and sent to England ; the slow avenger of his 
father's death ; who lived at the court of Hor- 
wendillus five hundred years before we were 



104 HAMLET. 

bora, but all whose thoughts we seem to know 
as well as we do our own, because we have read 
them in Shakespear. 

Hamlet is a name : his speeches and sayings 
but the idle coinage of the poet's brain. What 
then, are they not real ? They are as real as 
our own thoughts* Their reality is in the 
reader's mind. It is we who are Hamlet. This 
play has a prophetic truth, which is above that 
of history. Whoever has become thoughtful 
and melancholy through his own mishaps or 
those of others ; whoever has borne about with 
him the clouded brow of reflection, and thought 
himself "too much i' th' sun;" whoever has 
seen the golden lamp of day dimmed by envious 
mists rising in his own breast, and could find in 
the world before him only a dull blank with no- 
thing left remarkable in it; whoever has known 
" the pangs of despised love, the insolence of 
office, or the spurns which patient merit of the 
unworthy takes ;" he who has felt his mind sink 
within him, and sadness cling to his heart like 
a malady, who has had his hopes blighted and 
his youth staggered by the apparitions of strange 
things ; who cannot be well at ease, while he 
sees evil hovering near him like a spectre; whose 
powers of action have been eaten up by thought, 
he to whom the universe seems infinite, and 
himself nothing ; whose bitterness of soul makes 
him careless of consequences, and who goes to 



HAMLET. 105 

a play as his best resource to shove off, to $ 
second remove, the evils of life by a mock-re- 
presentation of them — this is the true Hamlet. 

We have been so used to this tragedy that we 
hardly know how to criticise it any more than 
we should know how to describe our own faces. 
But we must make such observations as we can. 
It is the one of Shakespear's plays that we think 
of oftenest, because it abounds most in striking 
reflections on human life, and because the dis- 
tresses of Hamlet are transferred, by the turn of 
his mind, to the general account of humanity. 
Whatever happens to him, we apply to our- 
selves, because he applies it so himself as a 
means of general reasoning. He is a great mo- 
raliser; and what makes him worth attending 
to is, that he moralises on his own feelings and 
experience. He is not a common-place pedant. 
If Lear shews the greatest depth of passion, 
Hamlet is the most remarkable for the inge- 
nuity, originality, and unstudied developement 
of character. Shakespear had more magnani- 
mity than any other poet, and he has shewn 
more of it in this play than in any other. 
There is no attempt to force an interest : every 
thing is left for time and circumstances to un- 
fold. The attention is excited without effort, 
the incidents succeed each other as matters of 
course, the characters think and speak and act 
just as they might do, if left entirely to them- 



106 HAMLET. 

selves. There is no set purpose, no straining 
at a point. The observations are suggested by 
the passing scene — the gusts of passion come 
and go like sounds of music borne on the wind. 
The whole play is an exact transcript of what 
might be supposed to have taken place at the 
court of Denmark, at the remote period of time 
fixed upon, before the modern refinements in 
morals and manners were heard of. It would 
have been interesting enough to have been ad- 
mitted as a by-stander in such a scene, at such 
a time, to have heard and seen something of 
what was going on. But here we are more than 
spectators. We have not only " the outward 
pageants and the signs of grief ;" but " we have 
that within which passes shew." We read the 
thoughts of the heart, we catch the passions 
living as they rise. Other dramatic writers give 
us very fine versions and paraphrases of nature : 
but Shakespear, together with his own com- 
ments, gives us the original text, that we may 
judge for ourselves. This is a very great advan- 
tage. 

The character of Hamlet is itself a pure effu- 
sion of genius. It is not a character marked by 
strength of will or even of passion, but by re- 
finement of thought and sentiment. Hamlet is 
as little of the hero as a man can well be : but 
he is a young and princely novice, full of high 
enthusiasm and quick sensibility — the sport of 



HAMLET. 107 

circumstances, questioning with fortune and re- 
fining on his own feelings, and forced from the 
natural bias of his disposition by the strangeness 
of his situation. He seems incapable of delibe- 
rate action, and is only hurried into extremi- 
ties on the spur of the occasion, when he has 
no time to reflect, as in the scene where he kills 
Polonius, and again, where he alters the letters 
which Rosencraus and Guildenstern are taking 
with them to England, purporting his death. 
At other times, when he is most bound to act, 
he remains puzzled, undecided, and sceptical, 
dallies with his purposes, till the occasion is 
lost, and always finds some pretence to relapse 
into indolence and thoughtful ness again. For 
this reason he refuses to kill the King when he 
is at his prayers, and by a refinement in malice, 
which is in truth only an excuse for his own 
want of resolution, defers his revenge to some 
more fatal opportunity, when he shall be en- 
gaged in some act " that has no relish of salva- 
tion in it." 



<c He kneels and prays, 

And now I'll do't, and so he goes to heaven, 

And so am I reveng'd : that would be scanned. 

He kill'd my father, and for that, 

I, his sole son, send him to heaven. 

Why this is reward, not revenge. 

Up sword and know thou a more horrid time, 

When he is drunk, asleep, or in a rage." 



108 HAMLET. 

He is the prince of philosophical speculators, 
and because he cannot have his revenge perfect, 
according to the most refined idea his wish can 
form, he misses it altogether. So he scruples 
to trust the suggestions of the Ghost, contrives 
the scene of the play to have surer proof of his 
uncle's guilt, and then rests satisfied with this 
confirmation of his suspicions, and the success 
of his experiment, instead of acting upon it. Yet 
he is sensible of his own weakness, taxes himself 
with it, and tries to reason himself out of it. 

ff How all occasions do inform against me, 
And spur my dull revenge ! What is a man, 
If his chief good and market of his time 
Be but to sleep and feed ? A beast j no more. 
Sure he that made us with such large discourse, 
Looking before and after, gave us not 
That capability and god-like reason 
To rust in us unus'd : now whether it be 
Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple 
Of thinking too precisely on th' event, — 
A thought which quarter'd, hath but one part wisdom, 
And ever three parts coward ; — I do not know 
Why yet I live to say, this thing's to do ; 
Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and means 
To do it. Examples gross as earth excite me : 
Witness this army of such mass and charge, 
Led by a delicate and tender prince, 
Whose spirit with divine ambition puff'd; 
Makes mouths at the invisible event, 
Exposing what is mortal and unsure 
To all that fortune, death, and danger dare. 



HAMLET. 109 

Even for an egg-shell. 'Tis not to be great, 

Never to stir without great argument ; 

But greatly to find quarrel in a straw, 

When honour's at the stake. How stand I then. 

That have a father kill'd, a mother stain' d, 

Excitements of my reason and my blood, 

And let all sleep, while to my shame I see 

The imminent death of twenty thousand men, 

That for a fantasy and trick of fame, 

Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot 

Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause, 

Which is not tomb enough and continent 

To hide the slain ? — O, from this time forth, 

My thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth." 

Still he does nothing; and this very speculation 
on his own infirmity only affords him another 
occasion for indulging it. It is not for any want 
of attachment to his father or abhorrence of 
his murder that Hamlet is thus dilatory, but it 
is more to his taste to indulge his imagination 
in reflecting upon the enormity of the crime and 
refining on his schemes of vengeance, than to 
put them into immediate practice. His ruling 
passion is to think, not to act: and any vague 
pretence that flatters this propensity instantly 
diverts him from his previous purposes. 

The moral perfection of this character has 
been called in question, we think, by those who 
did not understand it. It is more interesting than 
according to rules: amiable, though not fault- 
less. The ethical delineations of " that noble 



110 HAMLET. 

and liberal casuist" (as Shakespear has been well 
called) do not exhibit the drab-coloured qua- 
kerism of morality. His plays are not copied 
either from The Whole Duty of Man, or from 
The Academy of Compliments I We confess, 
we are a little shocked at the want of refinement 
in those who are shocked at the want of refine- 
ment in Hamlet. The want of punctilious ex- 
actness in his behaviour either partakes of the 
" license of the time," or else belongs to the 
very excess of intellectual refinement in the 
character, which makes the common rules of 
life, as well as his own purposes, sit loose upon 
him. He may be said to be amenable only to 
the tribunal of his own thoughts, and is too 
much taken up with the airy world of contem- 
plation to lay as much stress as he ought on 
the practical consequences of things. His habi- 
tual principles of action are unhinged and out 
of joint with the time. His conduct to Ophelia 
is quite natural in his circumstances. It is that 
of assumed severity only. It is the effect of 
disappointed hope, of bitter regrets, of affec- 
tion suspended, not obliterated, by the distrac- 
tions of the scene around him ! Amidst the 
natural and preternatural horrors of his situa- 
tion, he might be excused in delicacy from 
carrying on a regular courtship. When " his fa- 
ther's spirit was in arms," it was not a time for 
the son to make love in. He could neither marry 



HAMLET. Ill 

Ophelia, nor wound her mind by explaining 
the cause of his alienation, which he durst 
hardly trust himself to think of. It would have 
taken him years to have come to a direct expla- 
nation on the point. In the harassed state of 
his mind, he could not have done otherwise 
than he did. His conduct does not contradict 
what he says when he sees her funeral, 

" I loved Ophelia : forty thousand brothers 
Could not with all their quantity of love 
Make up my sum." 

Nothing can be more affecting or beautiful 
than the Queen's apostrophe to Ophelia on 
throwing flowers into the grave. 

" Sweets to the sweet, farewell. 



I hop'd thou should'st have been my Hamlet's wife : 
I thought thy bride-bed to have deck'd, sweet maid, 
And not have strew' d thy grave." 

Shakespear was thoroughly a master of the 
mixed motives of human character, and he 
here shews us the Queen, who was so crimi- 
nal in some respects, not without sensibi- 
lity and affection in other relations of life. — 
Ophelia is a character almost too exquisitely 
touching to be dwelt upon. Oh rose of May, 
oh flower too soon faded! Her love, her mad- 
ness, her death, are described with the truest 



112 HAMLET. 

touches of tenderness and pathos. It is a cha- 
racter which nobody but Shakespear could have 
drawn in the way that he has done, and to the 
conception of which there is not even the small- 
est approach, except in some of the old romantic 
ballads. Her brother, Laertes, is a character 
we do not like so well: he is too hot and cho- 
leric, and somewhat rodomontade. Polonius 
is a perfect character in its kind ; nor is there 
any foundation for the objections which have 
been made to the consistency of this part. It 
is said that he acts very foolishly and talks 
very sensibly. There is no inconsistency in 
that. Again, that he talks wisely at one time 
and foolishly at another ; that his advice to La- 
ertes is very sensible, and his advice to the King 
and Queen on the subject of Hamlet's madness 
very ridiculous. But he gives the one as a fa- 
ther, and is sincere in it ; he gives the other 
as a mere courtier, a busy-body, and is accord- 
ingly officious, garrulous, and impertinent. In 
short, Shakespear has been accused of incon- 
sistency in this and other characters, only be- 
cause he has kept up the distinction which 
there is in nature, between the understandings 
and the moral habits of men, between the ab- 
surdity of their ideas and the absurdity of their 
motives. Polonius is not a fool, but he makes 
himself so. His folly, whether in his actions or 



HAMLET. 113 

speeches, comes under the head of impropriety 
of intention. 

We do not like to see our author's plays 
acted, and least of all, Hamlet. There is no 
play that suffers so much in being transferred 
to the stage. Hamlet himself seems hardly 
capable of being acted. Mr. Kemble unavoid- 
ably fails in this character from a want of ease 
and variety. The character of Hamlet is made 
up of undulating lines ; it has the yielding flexi- 
bility of " a wave o' th' sea." Mr. Kemble 
plays it like a man in armour, with a deter- 
mined inveteracy of purpose, in one undeviat- 
ing straight line, which is as remote from the 
natural grace and refined susceptibility of the 
character, as the sharp angles and abrupt starts 
which Mr. Kean introduces into the part. Mr. 
Kean's Hamlet is as much too splenetic and 
rash as Mr. Kemble's is too deliberate and for- 
mal. His manner is too strong and pointed. 
He throws a severity, approaching to virulence, 
into the common observations and answers. 
There is nothing of this in Hamlet. He is, as 
it were, wrapped up in his reflections, and only 
thinks aloud. There should therefore be no 
attempt to impress what he says upon others 
by a studied exaggeration of emphasis or man- 
ner ; no talking at his hearers. There should 
be as much of the gentleman and scholar as 



114 HAMLET. 

possible infused into the part, and as little of 
the actor. A pensive air of sadness should sit 
reluctantly upon his brow, but no appearance 
of fixed and sullen gloom. He is full of weak- 
ness and melancholy, but there is no harshness 
in his nature. He is the most amiable of mi- 
santhropes. 



THE TEMPEST. 



There can be little doubt that Shakespear 
was the most universal genius that ever lived. 
" Either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, 
pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, scene in- 
dividable or poem unlimited, he is the only 
man. Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor Plau- 
tus too light for him." He has not only the 
same absolute command over our laughter and 
our tears, all the resources of passion, of wit, 
of thought, of observation, but he has the most 
unbounded range of fanciful invention, whe- 
ther terrible or playful, the same insight into 
the world of imagination that he has into the 
world of reality; and over all there presides 
the same truth of character and nature, and 
the same spirit of humanity. His ideal be- 
ings are as true and natural as his real cha- 



116 THE TEMPEST. 

racters ; that is, as consistent with themselves, 
or if we suppose such beings to exist at all, they 
could not act, speak, or feel otherwise than as 
he makes them. He has invented for them a 
language, manners, and sentiments of their own, 
from the tremendous imprecations of the Witches 
in Macbeth, when they do " a deed without a 
name," to the sylph-like expressions of Ariel, 
who "does his spiriting gently; 55 the mischiev- 
ous tricks and gossipping of Robin Goodfellow, 
or the uncouth gabbling and emphatic gesticu- 
lations of Caliban in this play. 

The Tempest is one of the most original and 
perfect of Shakespear's productions, and he has 
shewn in it all the variety of his powers. It is 
full of grace and grandeur. The human and 
imaginary characters, the dramatic and the 
grotesque, are blended together with the greatest 
art, and without any appearance of it. Though 
he has here given " to airy nothing a local habi- 
tation and a name, 55 yet that part which is only 
the fantastic creation of his mind, has the same 
palpable texture, and coheres " semblably 55 with 
the rest. As the preternatural part has the air 
of reality, and almost haunts the imagination 
with a sense of truth, the real characters and 
events partake of the wildness of a dream. The 
stately magician, Prospero, driven from his 
dukedom, but around whom (so potent is his 
art) airy spirits throng numberless to do his 



THE TEMPEST. 117 

bidding; his daughter Miranda (" worthy of 
that name") to whom all the power of his art 
points, and who seems the goddess of the isle ; 
the princely Ferdinand, cast by fate upon the 
haven of his happiness in this idol of his love ; 
the delicate Ariel; the savage Caliban, half brute, 
half demon ; the drunken ship's crew — are all 
connected parts of the story, and can hardly 
be spared from the place they fill. Even the 
local scenery is of a piece and character with 
the subject. Prosperous enchanted island seems 
to have risen up out of the sea ; the airy music, 
the tempest-tost vessel, the turbulent waves, all 
have the effect of the landscape back-ground of 
some fine picture. Shakespear's pencil is (to use 
an allusion of his own) " like the dyer's hand, 
subdued to what it works in." Every thing in 
him, though it partakes of " the liberty of wit," is 
also subjected to " the law" of the understand- 
ing. For instance, even the drunken sailors, who 
are made reeling-ripe, share, in the disorder of 
their minds and bodies, in the tumult of the 
elements, and seem on shore to be as much at 
the mercy of chance as they were before at the 
mercy of the winds and waves. These fellows 
with their sea-wit are the least to our taste of any 
part of the play : but they are as like drunken 
sailors as they can be, and are an indirect foil 
to Caliban, whose figure acquires a classical 
dignity in the comparison. 



118 THE TEMPEST. 

The character of Caliban is generally thought 
(and justly so) to be one of the author's master- 
pieces. It is not indeed pleasant to see this cha- 
racter on the stage any more than it is to see 
the God Pan personated there. But in itself it 
is one of the wildest and most abstracted of all 
Shakespear's characters, whose deformity whe- 
ther of body or mind is redeemed by the power 
and truth of the imagination displayed in it. 
It is the essence of grossness, but there is not 
a particle of vulgarity in it. Shakespear has 
described the brutal mind of Caliban in contact 
with the pure and original forms of nature; the 
character grows out of the soil where it is rooted 
uncontrouled, uncouth and wild, uncramped by 
any of the meannesses of custom. It is " of the 
earth, earthy." It seems almost to have been 
dug out of the ground, with a soul instinctively 
superadded to it answering to its wants and 
origin. Vulgarity is not natural coarseness, but 
conventional coarseness, learnt from others, 
contrary to, or without an entire conformity 
of natural power and disposition ; as fash- 
ion is the common-place affectation of what 
is elegant and refined without any feeling of 
the essence of it. Schlegel, the admirable 
German critic on Shakespear, observes that 
Caliban is a poetical character, and " always 
speaks in blank verse." He first comes in 
thus : 



THE TEMPEST. 119 

%< Caliban. As wicked dew as e'er my mother brush'd 
With raven's feather from unwholesome fen, 
Drop on you both : a south-west blow on ye, 
And blister you all o'er ! 

Prospero. For this, be sure, to-night thou shalt have 
cramps, 
Side-stitches that shall pen thy breath up j urchins 
Shall for that vast of night that they may work, 
All exercise on thee : thou shalt be pinch'd 
As thick as honey- combs, each pinch more stinging 
Than bees that made 'em. 

Caliban. I must eat my dinner. 
This island's mine by Sycorax my mother, 
Which thou tak'st from me. When thou earnest first, 
Thou stroak'dst me,, and mad'st much of me j would' st 

give me 
Water with berries in't 5 and teach me how 
To name the bigger light and how the less 
That burn by day and night j and then 1 lov'd thee, 
And shew'd thee all the qualities o' th' isle, 
The fresh springs, brine-pits, barren place and fertile : 
Curs'd be I that I did so ! All the charms 
Of Sycorax, toads, beetles, bats, light on you ! 
For I am all the subjects that you have, 
Who first was mine own king ; and here you sty me 
In this hard rock, whiles you do keep from me 
The rest o' th' island. 

And again, he promises Trinculo his services 
thus, if he will free him from his drudgery. 

" I'll shew thee the best springs j I'll pluck thee ber- 
ries, 
I'll fish for thee, and get thee wood enough. 
I pr'ythee let me bring thee where crabs grow, 



120 THE TEMPEST. 

And I with my long nails will dig thee pig -nuts : 
Shew thee a jay's nest, and instruct thee how 
To snare the nimble marmozet : I'll bring thee 
To clust'ring filberds -, and sometimes I'll get thee 
Young scamels from the rock." 

In conducting Stephano and Trinculo to Pros- 
perous cell, Caliban shews the superiority of 
natural capacity over greater knowledge and 
greater folly; and in a former scene, when Ariel 
frightens them with his music, Caliban to en- 
courage them accounts for it in the eloquent 
poetry of the senses. 

— " Be not afraid, the isle is full of noises, 

Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not. 

Sometimes a thousand twanging instruments 

Will hum about mine ears, and sometimes voices, 

That if I then had waked after long sleep, 

Would make me sleep again 5 and then in dreaming, 

The clouds methought would open, and shew riches 

Ready to drop upon me : when I wak'd 

I cried to dream again." 

This is not more beautiful than it is true. 
The poet here shews us the savage with the 
simplicity of a child, and makes the strange 
monster amiable. Shakespear had to paint the 
human animal rude and without choice in its 
pleasures, but not without the sense of pleasure 
or some germ of the affections. Master Bar- 
nardine in Measure for Measure, the savage of 



THE TEMPEST. 121 

civilized life, is an admirable philosophical coun- 
terpart to Caliban. 

Shakespear has, as it were by design, drawn 
off from Caliban the elements of whatever is 
ethereal and refined, to compound them in the 
unearthly mould of Ariel. Nothing was ever 
more finely conceived than this contrast be- 
tween the material and the spiritual, the gross 
and delicate. Ariel is imaginary power, the 
swiftness of thought personified. When told 
to make good speed by Prospero, he says, " I 
drink the air before me." This is something 
like Puck's boast on a similar occasion, " Pll 
put a girdle round about the earth in forty mi- 
nutes." But Ariel differs from Puck in having 
a fellow feeling in the interests of those he is 
employed about. How exquisite is the fol- 
lowing dialogue between him and Prospero ! 

" Ariel. Your charm so strongly works 'em, 
That if you now beheld them, your affections 
Would become tender. 

Prospero. Dost thou think so, spirit? 

Ariel. Mine would, sir, were I human. 

Prospero. And mine shall. 
Hast thou, which art but air, a touch, a feeling 
Of their afflictions, and shall not myself, 
One of their kind, that relish all as sharply, 
Passion'd as they, be kindlier moved than thou art?" 

It has been observed that there is a peculiar 
charm in the songs introduced in Shakespear, 



U1 THE TEMPEST. 

which, without conveying any distinct images, 
seem to recall all the feelings connected with 
them, like snatches of half-forgotten music heard 
indistinctly and at intervals. There is this effect 
produced by Ariel's songs, which (as we are told) 
seem to sound in the air, and as if the person 
playing them were invisible. We shall give one 
instance out of many of this general power. 

(C Enter Ferdinand ; and Ariel invisible, playing and 
singing. 

ARIEL'S SONG. 
Come unto these yellow sands, 
And then take hands j 
Curt'sied when you have, and kiss'd, 
(The wild waves whist j) 
Foot it featly here and there -, 
And sweet sprites the burden bear. 

[Burden dispersedly. 

Hark, hark! bowgh-wowgh: the watch-dogs 
Bowgh-wowgh. [bark, 

Ariel. Hark, hark ! I hear 

The strain of strutting chanticleer 
Cry cock-a-doodle-doo. 

Ferdinand. Where should this music be? in air or earth ? 
It sounds no more : and sure it waits upon 
Some god o' th' island. Sitting on a bank 
Weeping against the king my father's wreck, 
This music crept by me upon the waters, 
Allaying both their fury and my passion 
With its sweet air j thence I have follow'd it, 



THE TEMPEST, 123 

Or it hath drawn me rather :— but 'tis gone. — 
No, it begins again. 

ARIEL'S SONG. 
Full fathom five thy father lies, 

Of his bones are coral made : 
Those are pearls that were his eyes, 

Nothing of him that doth fade, 
But doth suffer a sea change, 
Into something rich and strange. 
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell — 
Hark ! now I hear them, ding-dong bell. 

[Burden ding-dong. 

Ferdinand. The ditty does remember my drown'd father. 
This is no mortal business, nor no sound 
That the-earth owns : I hear it now above me." — 

The courtship between Ferdinand and Mi- 
randa is one of the chief beauties of this play. 
It is the very purity of love. The pretended 
interference of Prospero with it heightens its in- 
terest, and is in character with the magician, 
whose sense of preternatural power makes him 
arbitrary, tetchy, and impatient of opposition. 

The Tempest is a finer play than the Mid- 
summer Night's Dream, which has sometimes 
been compared with it ; but it is not so fine a 
poem. There are a greater number of beautiful 
passages in the latter. Two of the mosr striking 
in the Tempest are spoken by Prospero. The 
one is that admirable one when the vision which 
he has conjured up disappears, beginning " The 



124 THE TEMPEST. 

cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces," Sec, 
which has been so often quoted, that every 
school-boy knows it by heart ; the other is that 
which Prospero makes in abjuring his art. 

ct Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves, 
And ye that on the sands with printless foot 
Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him 
When he comes back ; you demi-puppets, that 
By moon-shine do the green sour ringlets make, 
Whereof the ewe not bites ; and you whose pastime 
Is to make midnight mushrooms, that rejoice 
To hear the solemn curfew, by whose aid 
(Weak masters tho' ye be) I have be-dimm'd 
The noon-tide sun, call'd forth the mutinous winds, 
And 'twixt the green sea and the azur'd vault 
Set roaring war; to the dread rattling thunder 
Have I giv'n fire, and rifted Jove's stout oak 
With his own bolt ; the strong-bas'd promontory 
Have I made shake, and by the spurs pluck' d up 
The pine and cedar ; graves at my command 
Have wak'd their sleepers ; op'd, and let 'em forth 
By my so potent art. But this rough magic 
I here abjure ; and when I have requir'd 
Some heav'nly music, which ev'n now I do, 
(To work mine end upon their senses that 
This airy charm is for) I'll break my staff, 
Bury it certain fadoms in the earth, 
And deeper than did ever plummet sound, 
I'll drown my book." — 

We must not forget to mention among other 
things in this play, that Shakespear has antici- 



THE TEMPEST. 125 

pated nearly all the arguments on the Utopian 
schemes of modern philosophy. 

" Gonzalo. Had I the plantation of this isle, my lord — 

Antonio. He'd sow't with nettle-seed. 

Sebastian. Or docks or mallows. 

Gonzalo. And were the king on't, what would I do ? 

Sebastian. 'Scape being drunk, for want of wine. 

Gonzalo. T th' commonwealth I would by contraries 
Execute all things : for no kind of traffic 
Would I admit ; no name of magistrate j 
Letters should not be known j wealth, poverty, 
And use of service, none ; contract, succession, 
Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none; 
No use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil ; 
No occupation, all men idle, all, 
And women too ; but innocent and pure : 
No sov'reignty. 

Sebastian. And yet he would be king on't. 

Antonio. The latter end of his commonwealth forgets 
the beginning. 

Gonzalo. All things in common nature should produce 
Without sweat or endeavour. Treason, felony, 
Sword, pike, knife, gun, or need of any engine 
Would I not have ; but nature should bring forth, 
Of its own kind, all foizon, all abundance 
To feed my innocent people ! 

Sebastian. No marrying 'mong his subjects? 

Antonio. None, man; all idle; whores and knaves. 
Gonzalo. I would with such perfection govern, sir, 
T' excel the golden age. 

Sebastian. Save his majesty !" 



THE 



MIDSUMMER NIGHTS DREAM. 



Bottom the Weaver is a character that has 
not had justice done him. He is the most ro- 
mantic of mechanics. And what a list of com- 
panions he has — Quince the Carpenter, Snug 
the Joiner, Flute the Bellows-mender, Snout 
the Tinker, Starveling the Tailor; and then 
again, what a group of fairy attendants, Puck, 
Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth, and Mustard- 
seed ! It has been observed that Shakespear's 
characters are constructed upon deep physiolo- 
gical principles ; and there is something in this 
play which looks very like it. Bottom the 
Weaver, who takes the lead of 

" This crew of patches, rude mechanicals, 
That work for bread upon Athenian stalls/' 



MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. 12? 

follows a sedentary trade, and he is accordingly 
represented as conceited, serious, and fantasti- 
cal. He is ready to undertake any thing and 
every thing, as if it was as much a matter of 
course as the motion of his loom and shuttle. 
He is for playing the tyrant, the lover, the 
lady, the lion. " He will roar that it shall do 
any man's heart good to hear him ;" and this 
being objected to as improper, he still has a 
resource in his good opinion of himself, and 
" will roar you an 'twere any nightingale." 
Snug the Joiner is the moral man of the piece, 
who proceeds by measurement and discretion in 
all things. You see him with his rule and com- 
passes in his hand. " Have you the lion's part 
written ? Pray you, if it be, give it me, for I 
am slow of study." — " You may do it extem- 
pore," says Quince, " for it is nothing but roar- 
ing." Starveling the Tailor keeps the peace, 
and objects to the lion and the drawn sword. 
" I believe we must leave the killing out when 
all's done." Starveling, however, does not start 
the objections himself, but seconds them when 
made by others, as if he had not spirit to ex- 
press his fears without encouragement. It is 
too much to suppose all this intentional : but 
it very luckily falls out so. Nature includes 
all that is implied in the most subtle analyti- 
cal distinctions ; and the same distinctions will 
be found in Shakespear. Bottom, who is not 



12S MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. 

only chief actor, but stage -manager for the 
occasion, has a device to obviate the danger of 
frightening the ladies : " Write me a prologue, 
and let the prologue seem to say, we will do no 
harm with our swords, and that Pyramus is not 
killed indeed ; and for better assurance, tell 
them that I, Pyramus, am not Pyramus, but 
Bottom the Weaver : this will put them out of 
fear." Bottom seems to have understood the 
subject of dramatic illusion at least as well as 
any modern essayist. If our holiday mechanic 
rules the roast among his fellows, he is no less 
at home in his new character of an ass, " with 
amiable cheeks, and fair large ears." He in- 
stinctively acquires a most learned taste, and 
grows fastidious in the choice of dried peas and 
bottled hay. He is quite familiar with his new 
attendants, and assigns them their parts with 
all due gravity. " Monsieur Cobweb, good 
Monsieur, get your weapon in your hand, and 
kill me a red-hipt humble-bee on the top of a 
thistle, and, good Monsieur, bring me the ho- 
ney-bag." What an exact knowledge is here 
shewn of natural history ! 

Puck, or Robin Goodfellow, is the leader of 
the fairy band. He is the Ariel of the Mid- 
summer Night's Dream; and yet as unlike 
as can be to the Ariel in The Tempest. No 
other poet could have made two such different 
characters out of the same fanciful materials 



MIDSUMMER NIGHTS DREAM. 129 

and situations. Ariel is a minister of retribu- 
tion, who is touched with a sense of pity at 
the woes he inflicts. Puck is a mad-cap sprite, 
full of wantonness and mischief, who laughs at 
those whom he misleads — " Lord, what fools 
these mortals be!" Ariel cleaves the air, and 
executes his mission with the zeal of a winged 
messenger ; Puck is borne along on his fairy 
errand like the light and glittering gossamer 
before the breeze. He is, indeed, a most Epi- 
curean little gentleman, dealing in quaint de- 
vices, and faring in dainty delights. Prospero 
and his world of spirits are a set of moralists : 
but with Oberon and his fairies we are launched 
at once into the empire of the butterflies. How 
beautifully is this race of beings contrasted with 
the men and women actors in the scene, by a 
single epithet which Titania gives to the latter, 
" the human mortals !" It is astonishing that 
Shakespear should be considered, not only by 
foreigners., but by m;iny of our own critics, as 
a gloomy and heavy writer, who painted no- 
thing but " gorgons and hydras, and chimeras 
dire." His subtlety exceeds that of all other 
dramatic writers, insomuch that a celebrated 
person of the present day said that he regarded 
him rather as a metaphysician than a poet. His 
delicacy and sportive gaiety are infinite. In 
the Midsummer Night's Dream alone, we 
should imagine, there is more sweetness and 

K 



130 MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S BREAM. 

beauty of description than in the whole range 
of French poetry put together. What we mean 
is this, that we will produce out of that single 
play ten passages, to which we do not think any 
ten passages in the works of the French poets can 
be opposed, displaying equal fancy and imagery. 
Shall we mention the remonstrance of Helena 
to Hermia, or Titania's description of her fairy 
train, or her disputes with Oberon about the 
Indian boy, or Puck's account of himself and 
his employments, or the Fairy Queen's exhor- 
tation to the elves to pay due attendance upon 
her favourite, Bottom ; or Hippolita's descrip- 
tion of a chace, or Theseus's answer ? The 
two last are as heroical and spirited as the 
others are full of luscious tenderness. .The 
reading of this play is like wandering in a grove 
by moonlight : the descriptions breathe a sweet- 
ness like odours thrown from beds of flowers. 

Titania's exhortation to the fairies to wait upon 
Bottom, which is remarkable for a certain cloy- 
ing sweetness in the repetition of the rhymes,, 
is as follows : — 

" Be kind and courteous to this gentleman. 
Hop in his walks, and gambol in his eyes, 
Feed him with apricocks and dewberries, 
With purple grapes, green figs and mulberries 5 
The honey-bags steel from the humble bees, 
And for night tapers crop their waxen thighs, 
And Kght them at the fiery glow-worm's eyes.. 



MIDSUMMER NIGHTS DREAM. 131 

To have my love to bed, and to arise : 
And pluck the wings from painted butterflies., 
To fan the moon -beams from his sleeping eyes ; 
Nod to him, elves, and do him courtesies." 

The sounds of the lute and of the trumpet 
are not more distinct than the poetry of the 
foregoing passage, and of the conversation be- 
tween Theseus and Hippolita. 

" Theseus. Go, one of you, find out the forester, 
For now our observation is perform' d ; 
And since we have the vaward of the day, 
My love shall hear the music of my hounds. 
Uncouple in the western valley, go, 
Dispatch, I say, and find the forester. 
We will, fair Queen, up to the mountain's top, 
And mark the musical confusion 
Of hounds and echo in conjunction. 

Hippolita. I was with Hercules and Cadmus once., 
When in a wood of Crete they bay'd the bear 
With hounds of Sparta ; never did I hear 
Such gallant chiding. For besides the groves, 
The skies, the fountains, every region near 
Seem'd all one mutual cry. I never heard 
So musical a discord, such sweet thunder. 

Theseus. My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind, 
So flew'd, so sanded, and their heads are hung 
With ears that sweep away the morning dew ; 
Crook-knee' d and dew-lap'd, like Thessalian bulls, 
Slow in pursuit, but matched in mouth like bells, 
Each under each. A cry more tuneable 
Was never halloo'd to, nor cheer'd with horn, 
In Crete, in Sparta, nor in Thessaly : 
Judge when you hear." — 



132 MIDSUMMER NIGHTS DREAM. 

Even Titian never made a hunting- piece of a 
gusto so fresh and lusty, and so near the first 
ages of the world as this. — 

It had been suggested to us, that the Mid- 
summer Night's Dream would do admirably 
to get up as a Christmas after-piece ; and our 
prompter proposed that Mr. Kean should play 
the part of Bottom, as worthy of his great ta- 
lents. He might, in the discharge of his duty, 
offer to play the lady like any of our actresses 
that he pleased, the lover or the tyrant like any 
of our actors that he pleased, and the lion like 
" the most fearful wild-fowl living." The car- 
penter, the tailor, and joiner, it was thought, 
would hit the galleries. The young ladies in 
love would interest the side-boxes ; and Robin 
Goodfellow and his companions excite a lively 
fellow-feeling in the children from school. 
There would be two courts, an empire within 
an empire, the Athenian and the Fairy King 
and Queen, with their attendants, and with 
all their finery. What an opportunity for pro- 
cessions, for the sound of trumpets and glitter- 
ing of spears! What a fluttering of urchins 5 
painted wings; what a delightful profusion of 
gauze clouds and airy spirits floating on them! 

Alas, the experiment has been tried, and has 
failed ; not through the fault of Mr. Kean, who 
did not play the part of Bottom, nor of Mr. 



U . ' MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. 133 

Liston, who did, and who played it well, but 
from the nature of things. 'The Midsummer 
Night's Dream, when acted, is converted 
from a delightful fiction into a dull pantomime. 
All that is finest in the play is lost in the repre- 
sentation. The spectacle was grand ; but the 
spirit was evaporated, the genius was fled. — 
Poetry and the stage do not agree well together. 
The attempt to reconcile them in this instance 
fails not only of effect, but of decorum. The 
ideal can have no place upon the stage, which is 
a picture without perspective : every thing there 
is in the fore-ground. That which was merely 
an airy shape, a dream, a passing thought, 
immediately becomes an unmanageable reality. 
Where all is left to the imagination (as is the 
case in reading) every circumstance, near or 
remote, has an equal chance of being kept in 
mind, and tells according to the mixed impres- 
sion of all that has been suggested. But the 
imagination cannot sufficiently qualify the actual 
impressions of the senses. Any offence given 
to the eye is not to be got rid of by explanation. 
Thus Bottom's head in the play is a fantastic 
illusion, produced by magic spells: on the stage, 
it is an ass's head, and nothing more; certainly 
a very strange costume for a gentleman to ap- 
pear in. Fancy cannot be embodied any more 
than a simile can be painted; and it is as idle 
to attempt it as to personate Wall or Moonshine. 



134 MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. 

Fairies are not incredible, but fairies six feet 
high are so. Monsters are not shocking, if they 
are seen at a proper distance. When ghosts 
appear at mid-day, when apparitions stalk along 
Cheapside, then may the Midsummer Night's 
Dream be represented without injury at Co- 
vent-garden or at Drury-lane. The boards of a 
theatre and the regions of fancy are not the 
same thing. 



ROMEO AND JULIET. 



rtOMEO and Juliet is the only tragedy which 
Shakespear has written entirely on a love-story. 
It is supposed to have been his first play, and 
it deserves to stand in that proud rank. There 
is the buoyant spirit of youth in every, line, in 
the rapturous intoxication of hope, and in the 
bitterness of despair. It has been said of Romeo 
and Juliet by a great critic, that " whatever 
is most intoxicating in the odour of a southern 
spring, languishing in the song of the nightin- 
gale, or voluptuous in the first opening of the 
rose, is to be found in this poem." The descrip- 
tion is true ; and yet it does not answer to our 
idea of the play. For if it has the sweetness of 
the rose, it has its freshness too; if it has the 
languor of the nightingale's song, it has also its 
giddy transport ; if it has the softness of a south- 



136 ROMEO AND JULIET. 

ern spring, it is as glowing and as bright. There 
is nothing of a sickly and sentimental cast. 
Romeo and Juliet are in love, but they are not 
Jove-sick. Every thing speaks the very soul 
of pleasure, the high and healthy pulse of the 
passions: the heartbeats, the blood circulates 
and mantles throughout. Their courtship is not 
an insipid interchange of sentiments lip-deep, 
learnt at second-hand from poems and plays, — 
made up of beauties of the most shadowy kind, 
of " fancies wan that hang the pensive head/' 
of evanescent smiles and sighs that breathe not, 
of delicacy that shrinks from the touch and fee- 
bleness that scarce supports itself, an elaborate 
vacuity of thought, and an artificial dearth of 
sense, spirit, truth, and nature'. It is the re- 
verse of all this. It is Shakespear all over, and 
Shakespear when he was young. 

We have heard it objected to Romeo and 
Juliet, that it is founded on an idle passion 
between a boy and a girl, who have scarcely 
seen and can have but little sympathy or ra- 
tional esteem for one another, who have had no 
experience of the good or ills of life, and whose 
raptures or despair must be therefore equallv 
groundless and fantastical. Whoever objects to 
the youth of the parties in this play as " too 
unripe and crude" to pluck the sweets of love, 
and wishes to see a first-love carried on into a 



ROMEO AND JULIET. 137 

good old age, and the passions taken at the 
rebound, when their force is spent, may find 
all this done in the Stranger and in other Ger- 
man plays, where they do things by contraries, 
and transpose nature to inspire sentiment and 
create philosophy. Shakespear proceeded in a 
more strait-forward, and, we think, effectual way. 
He did not endeavour to extract beauty from 
wrinkles, or the wild throb of passion from the 
last expiring sigh of indifference. He did not 
" gather grapes of thorns nor figs of thistles/' 
It was not his way. But he has given a picture 
of human life, such as it is in the order of nature. 
He has founded the passion of the two lovers 
not on the pleasures they had experienced, but 
on all the pleasures they had not experienced. 
All that was to come of life was theirs. At 
that untried source of promised happiness they 
slaked their thirst, and the first eager draught 
made them drunk with love and joy. They 
w r ere in full possession of their senses and 
their affections. Their hopes were of air, their 
desires of fire. Youth is the season of love, 
because the heart is then first melted in ten- 
derness from the touch of novelty, and kindled 
to rapture, for it knows no end of its enjoyments 
or its wishes. Desire has no limit but itself. 
Passion, the love and expectation of pleasure, 
is infinite, extravagant, inexhaustible, till ex- 



138 ROMEO ANB JULIET. 

perience comes to check and kill it. Juliet 
exclaims on her first interview with Romeo — 

cc My bounty is as boundless as the sea, 
My love as deep." 

And why should it not? What was to hinder 
the thrilling tide of pleasure, which had just 
gushed from her heart, from flowing on without 
stint or measure, but experience which she was 
yet without ? What was to abate the transport 
of the first sweet sense of pleasure, which her 
heart and her senses had just tasted, but indif- 
ference which she was yet a stranger to? What 
was there to check the ardour of hope, of faith, 
of constancy, just rising in her breast, but dis- 
appointment which she had not yet felt ? As 
are the desires and the hopes of youthful pas- 
sion, such is the keenness of its disappoint- 
ments, and their baleful effect. Such is the 
transition in this play from the highest bliss to 
the lowest despair, from the nuptial couch to an 
untimely grave. The only evil that even in ap- 
prehension befalls the two lovers is the loss of the 
greatest possible felicity ; yet this loss is fatal 
to both, for they had rather part with life than 
bear the thought of surviving all that had made 
life dear to them. In all this, Shakespear has but 
followed nature, which existed in his time, as 
well as now. The modern philosophy, which 



ROMEO AND JULIET. 139 

reduces the whole theory of the mind to habi- 
tual impressions, and leaves the natural impulses 
of passion and imagination out of the account, 
had not then been discovered ; or if it had, 
would have been little calculated for the uses of 
poetry. 

It is the inadequacy of the same false system 
of philosophy to account for the strength of our 
earliest attachments, which has led Mr. Words- 
worth to indulge in the mystical visions of Pla- 
tonism in his Ode on the Progress of Life. He 
has very admirably described the vividness of 
our impressions in youth and childhood, and how 
" they fade by degrees into the light of common 
day," and he ascribes the change to the supposi- 
tion of a pre-existent state, as if our early thoughts 
were nearer heaven, reflections of former trails of 
glory, shadows of our past being. This is idle. 
It is not from the knowledge of the past that the 
first impressions of things derive their gloss and 
splendour, but from our ignorance of the future, 
which fills the void to come with the warmth of 
our desires, with our gayest hopes, and brightest 
fancies. It is the obscurity spread before it that 
colours the prospect of life with hope, as it is 
the cloud which reflects the rainbow. There is 
no occasion to resort to any mystical union and 
transmission of feeling through different states 
of being to account for the romantic enthusiasm 
of youth ; nor to plant the root of hope in the 



140 ROMEO AND JULIET. 

grave, nor to derive it from the skies. Its root 
is in the heart of man : it lifts its head above 
the stars. Desire and imagination are inmates 
of the human breast. The heaven " that lies 
about us in our infancy" is only a new world, of 
which we know nothing but what we wish it to 
be, and believe all that we wish. In youth and 
boyhood, the world we live in is the world of de- 
sire, and of fancy: it is experience that brings 
us down to the world of reality. What is it that 
in youth sheds a dewy light round the evening 
star ? That makes the daisy look so bright ? 
That perfumes the hyacinth ? That embalms 
the first kiss of love? It is the delight of no- 
velty, and the seeing no end to the pleasure that 
we fondly believe is still in store for us. The 
heart revels in the luxury of its own thoughts, 
and is unable to sustain the weight of hope and 
love that presses upon it. — The effects of the 
passion of love alone might have dissipated Mr. 
Wordsworth's theory, if he means any thing more 
by it than an ingenious and poetical allegory. 
That at least is not a link in the chain let down 
from other worlds ; " the purple light of love" 
is not a dim reflection of the smiles of celestial 
bliss. It does not appear till the middle of life, 
and then seems like " another morn risen on 
mid-day." In this respect the soul comes into 
the world " in utter nakedness." Love waits 
for the ripening of the youthful blood. The 



ROMEO AND JULIET. 141 

sense of pleasure precedes the love of pleasure, 
but with the sense of pleasure, as soon as it is 
felt, come thronging infinite desires and hopes 
of pleasure, and love is mature as soon as born. 
It withers and it dies almost as soon ! 

This play presents a beautiful coup-d'ceil of 
the progress of human life. In thought it occu- 
pies years, and embraces the circle of the affec- 
tions from childhood to old age. Juliet has 
become a great girl, a young woman since we 
first remember her a little thing in the idle prat- 
tle of the nurse, Lady Capulet was about her 
age when she became a mother, and old Capulet 
somewhat impatiently tells his younger visitors, 

* I've seen the day, 



That I have worn a visor, and could tell 

A whispering tale in a fair lady's ear, 

Such as would please : 'tis gone,, 'tis gone, 'tis gone." 

Thus one period of life makes way for the fol- 
lowing, and one generation pushes another off 
the stage. One of the most striking passages to 
shew the intense feeling of youth in this play is 
Capulet's invitation to Paris to visit his enter- 
tainment. 

" At my poor house, look to behold this night 
Earth- treading stars that make dark heav'n light j 
Such comfort as do lusty young men feel 
When well-apparel'd April on the heel 



142 ROMEO AND JULIET. 

Of limping winter treads, even such delight 
Among fresh female-buds shall you this night 
Inherit at my house." 

The feelings of youth and of the spring are 
here blended together like the breath of opening 
flowers. Images of vernal beauty appear to have 
floated before the author's mind, in writing this 
poem, in profusion. Here is another of exqui- 
site beauty, brought in more by accident than 
by necessity. Montague declares of his son 
smit with a hopeless passion, which he will not 
reveal — 

<c But he, his own affection's counsellor, 
Is to himself so secret and so close, 
So far from sounding and discovery, 
As is the bud bit with an envious worm, 
Ere he can spread his sweet leaves to the air, 
Or dedicate his beauty to the sun." 

This casual description is as full of passionate 
beauty as when Romeo dwells in frantic fond- 
ness on " the white wonder of his Juliet's hand." 
The reader may, if he pleases, contrast the ex- 
quisite pastoral simplicity of the above lines with 
the gorgeous description of Juliet when Romeo 
first sees her at her father's house, surrounded 
by company and artificial splendour. 

" What lady's that which doth enrich the hand 
Of yonder knight } 



ROMEO AND JULIET. 143 

O she doth teach the torches to burn bright 5 
Her beauty hangs upon the cheek of night, 
Like a rich jewel in an ^Ethiop's ear." 

It would be hard to say which of the two 
garden scenes is the finest, that where he first 
converses with his love, or takes leave of her 
the morning after their marriage. Both are like 
a heaven upon earth : the blissful bowers of 
Paradise let down upon this lower world. We 
will give only one passage of these well known 
scenes to shew the perfect refinement and de- 
licacy of Shakespear's conception of the female 
character. It is wonderful how Collins, who 
was a critic and a poet of great sensibility, should 
have encouraged the common error on this sub- 
ject by saying — " But stronger Shakespear felt 
for man alone." 

The passage we mean is Juliet's apology for 
her maiden boldness. 

" Thou know'st the mask of night is on my face 5 
Else would a maiden blush bepaint my cheek 
For that which thou hast heard me speak to-night. 
Fain would I dwell on form, fain, fain deny 
What I have spoke — but farewel compliment : 
Dost thou love me 3 I know thou wilt say, ay, 
And I will take thee at thy word — Yet if thou swear'st, 
Thou may'st prove false ; at lovers' perjuries 
They say Jove laughs. Oh gentle Romeo, 
If thou dost love, pronounce it faithfully 3 
Or if thou think 1 am too quickly won., 
I'll frown and be perverse, and say thee nay, 



144 ROMEO AND JULIET. 

So thou wilt woo : but else not for the world. 
In truth, fair Montague, I am too fond ; 
And therefore thou may'st think my 'haviour light 5 
But trust me, gentleman, I'll piove more true 
Than those that have more cunning to be strange, 
I should have been more strange, I must confess, 
But that thou over-heard'st, ere I was ware, 
My true love's passion ; therefore pardon me, 
And not impute this yielding to light love, 
Which the dark night hath so discovered." 

In this and all the rest her heart fluttering be- 
tween pleasure, hope, and fear, seems to have 
dictated to her tongue, and " calls true 'love 
spoken simple modesty." Of\the same sort, but 
bolder in virgin innocence, is her soliloquy after 
her marriage with Romeo, 

" Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds, 
Towards Phoebus' mansion 5 such a waggoner 
As Phaeton would whip you to the west, 
And bring in cloudy night immediately. 
Spread thy close curtain, love- performing night 5 
That run-aways' eyes may wink j and Romeo 

Leap to these arms, untalked of, and unseen ! 

Lovers can see to do their amorous rites 
By their own beauties : or if love be blind, 
It best agrees with night. — Come, civil night, 
Thou sober-suited matron, all in black, 
v And learn me how to lose a winning match, 
Play'd for a pair of stainless maidenhoods : 
Hood my unmann'd blood bating in my cheeks, 
With thy black mantle j till strange love, grown bold, 
Thinks true love acted, simple modesty. 
Come night ! — Come, Romeo ! come, thou day in night ; 



ROMEO AND JULIET. 145 

For thou wilt lie upon the wings of night 
Whiter than new snow on a raven's back. 



Come, gentle night -, come, loving, black-brow'd night, 
Give me my Romeo : and when he shall die, 
Take him and cut him out in little stars, 
And he will make the face of heaven so fine, 
That all the world shall be in love with night, 

And pay no worship to the garish sun. 

O, I have bought the mansion of a love, 
But not possess'd it ; and though I am sold, 
Not yet enjoy'd : so tedious is this day, 
As is the night before some festival 
To an impatient child, that hath new robes, 
And may not wear them." 

We the rather insert this passage here, inas- 
much as we have no doubt it has been expunged 
from the Family Shakespear. Such critics do 
not perceive that the feelings of the heart sanc- 
tify, without disguising, the impulses of nature. 
Without refinement themselves, they confound 
modesty with hypocrisy. Not so the German 
critic, Schlegel. Speaking of Romeo and Ju- 
liet, he says, " It was reserved for Shakespear 
to unite purity of heart and the glow of imagina- 
tion, sweetness and dignity of manners and pas- 
sionate violence, in one ideal picture." The 
character is indeed one of perfect truth and 
sweetness. It has nothing forward, nothing coy, 
nothing affected or coquettish about it ; — it is a 
pure effusion of nature. It is as frank as it is 

L 



146 ROMEO AND JULIET. 

modest, for it has no thought that it wishes to 
conceal. It reposes in conscious innocence on 
the strength of its affections. Its delicacy does 
not consist in coldness and reserve, but in com- 
bining warmth of imagination and tenderness of 
heart with the most voluptuous sensibility. 
Love is a gentle flame that rarefies and expands 
her whole being. What an idea of trembling 
haste and airy grace, borne upon the thoughts of 
love, does the Friar's exclamation give of her, 
as she approaches his cell to be married — 

" Here comes the lady. Oh, so light of foot 
Will ne'er wear out the everlasting flint : 
A lover may bestride the gossamer, 
That idles in the wanton summer air, 
And yet not fall, so light is vanity." 

The tragic part of this character is of a piece 
with the rest. It is the heroic founded on ten- 
derness and delicacy. Of this kind are her reso- 
lution to follow the Friar's advice, and the con- 
flict in her bosom between apprehension and 
love when she comes to take the sleeping poison. 
Shakespear is blamed for the mixture of low 
characters. If this is a deformity, it is the source 
of a thousand beauties. One instance is the 
contrast between the guileless simplicity of Ju- 
liet's attachment to her first love, and the conve- 
nient policy of the nurse in advising her to marry 
Paris, which excites such indignation in her 



ROMEO AND JULIET. 147 

mistress. " Ancient damnation ! oh most wicked 
fiend," &c. 

Romeo is Hamlet in love. There is the same 
rich exuberance of passion and sentiment in the 
one, that there is of thought and sentiment in 
the other. Both are absent and self-involved, 
both live out of themselves in a world of imagi- 
nation. Hamlet is abstracted from every thing ; 
Romeo is abstracted from every thing but his 
love, and lost in it. His " frail thoughts dally 
with faint surmise," and are fashioned out of the 
suggestions of hope, " the flatteries of sleep." 
He is himself only in his Juliet; she is his only 
reality, his heart's true home and idol. The 
rest of the world is to him a passing dream. 
How finely is this character pourtrayed where 
he recollects himself on seeing Paris slain at the 
tomb of Juliet! 

tc What said my man when my betossed soul 
Did not attend him as we rode ? I think 
He told me Paris should have married Juliet.** 

And again, just before he hears the sudden tid- 
ings of her death — 

" If I may trust the flattery of sleep, 
My dreams presage some joyful news at hand 3 
My bosom's lord sits lightly on his throne, 
And all this day an unaccustom'd spirit 
Lifts me above the ground with cheerful thoughts, 
I dreamt my lady came and found me dead, 



148 ROMEO AND JULIET. 

(Strange dream ! that gives a dead man leave to think) 

And breath'd such life with kisses on my lips, 

That I reviv'd and was an emperour. 

Ah me ! how sweet is love itself possess'd, 

When but love's shadows are so rich in joy !" 

Romeo's passion for Juliet is not a first love : 
it succeeds and drives oift his passion for another 
mistress, Rosaline, as the sun hides the stars. 
This is perhaps an artifice (not absolutely neces- 
sary) to give us a higher opinion of the lady, 
while the first absolute surrender of her heart to 
him enhances the richness of the prize. The 
commencement, progress, and ending of his se- 
cond passion are however complete in them- 
selves, not injured, if they are not bettered by 
the first. The outline of the play is taken from 
an Italian novel ; but the dramatic arrangement 
of the different scenes between the lovers, the 
more than dramatic interest in the progress of 
the story, the developement of the characters 
with time and circumstances, just according to 
the degree and kind of interest excited, are not 
inferior to the expression of passion and nature. 
It has been ingeniously remarked among other 
proofs of skill in the contrivance of the fable, 
that the improbability of the main incident in 
the piece, the administering of the sleeping-po- 
tion, is softened and obviated from the beginning 
by the introduction of the Friar on his first ap- 
pearance culling simples and descanting on their 



ROMEO AND JULIET. 149 

virtues. Of the passionate scenes in this tra- 
gedy, that between the Friar and Romeo when 
he is told of his sentence of banishment, that 
between Juliet and the Nurse when she hears of 
it, and of the death of her cousin Tybalt (which 
bear no proportion in her mind, when passion 
after the first shock of surprise throws its weight 
into the scale of her affections) and the last 
scene at the tomb, are among the most natural 
and overpowering. In all of these it is not 
merely the force of any one passion that is given, 
but the slightest and most unlooked-for transi- 
tions from one to another, the mingling currents 
of every different feeling rising up and prevailing 
in turn, swayed by the master-mind of the poet, 
as the waves undulate beneath the gliding storm. 
Thus when Juliet has by her complaints encou- 
raged the Nurse to say, " Shame come to Ro- 
meo," she instantly repels the wish, which she 
had herself occasioned, by answering — 

" Blister' d be thy tongue 
For such a wish, he was not born to shame. 
Upon his brow shame is ashamed to sit, 
For 'tis a throne where honour may be crown'd 
Sole monarch of the universal earth ! 
O, what a beast was I to chide him so ? 

Nurse. Will you speak well of him that kill'd your 
cousin ? 

Juliet. Shall I speak ill of him that is my husband ? 
Ah my poor lord, what tongue shall smooth thy name, 
When I, thy three-hours' wife, have mangled it?" 



150 ROMEO AND JULIET. 

And then follows on the neck of her remorse 
and returning fondness, that wish treading al- 
most on the brink of impiety, but still held back 
by the strength of her devotion to her lord, 
that " father, mother, nay, or both were dead," 
rather than Romeo banished. If she requires 
any other excuse, it is in the manner in which 
Romeo echoes her frantic grief and disappoint- 
ment in the next scene at being banished from 
her. — Perhaps one of the finest pieces of acting 
that ever was witnessed on the stage, is Mr. 
Kean's manner of doing this scene and his repe- 
tition of the word, Banished. He treads close 
indeed upon the genius of his author. 

A passage which this celebrated actor and 
able commentator on Shakespear (actors are the 
best commentators on the poets) did not give 
with equal truth or force of feeling was the one 
which Romeo makes at the tomb of Juliet, be- 
fore he drinks the poison. 

" Let me peruse this face — 

Mercutio's kinsman ! noble county Paris ! 
What said my man, when my betossed soul 
Did not attend him as we rode ! I think, 
He told me, Paris should have marry 'd Juliet ! 
Said he not so ? or did I dream it so ? 
Or am I mad, hearing him talk of Juliet, 

To think it was so ? O, give me thy hand, 

One writ with me in sour misfortune's book ! 

I'll bury thee in a triumphant grave 

For here lies Juliet. 



ROMEO AND JULIET. 151 

****** 
— O, my love ! my wife ! 



Death that hath suck'd the honey of thy breath, 
Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty : 
Thou art not conquer' d ; beauty's ensign yet 
Is crimson in thy lips, and in thy cheeks, 

And Death's pale flag is not advanced there. 

Tybalt, ly'st thou there in thy bloody sheet ? 

O, what more favour can I do to thee, 

Than with that hand that cut thy youth in twain, 

To sunder his that was thine enemy ? 

Forgive me, cousin ! Ah, dear Juliet, 

Why art thou yet so fair ! I will believe 

That unsubstantial death is amorous ; 

And that the lean abhorred monster keeps 

Thee here in dark to be his paramour. 

For fear of that, I will stay still with thee j 

And never from this palace of dim night 

Depart again : here, here will I remain 

With worms that are thy chamber-maids ; O, here 

Will I set up my everlasting rest ; 

And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars 

From this world-wearied flesh. — Eyes, look your last ! 

Arms, take your last embrace ! and lips, O you 

The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss 

A dateless bargain to engrossing death ! 

Come, bitter conduet, come unsavoury guide ! 
Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on 
The dashing rocks my sea-sick weary bark ! 
Here's to my love ! — [Drinks.] O, true apothecary ! 
Thy drugs are quick. — Thus with a kiss I die. 

The lines in this speech describing the love- 
liness of Juliet, who is supposed to be dead, 
have been compared to those in which it is said 



152 ROMEO AND JULIET. 

of Cleopatra after her death, that she looked 
" as she would take another Antony in her 
strong toil of grace ;" and a question has been 
started which is the finest, that we do not pre- 
tend to decide. We can more easily decide 
between Shakespear and any other author, than 
between him and himself. — Shall we quote any 
more passages to shew his genius or the beauty 
of Romeo and Juliet ? At that rate, we 
might quote the whole. The late Mr. Sheri- 
dan, on being shewn a volume of the Beauties of 
Shakespear, very properly asked — " But where 
are the other eleven ?" The character of Mer- 
cutio in this play is one of the most mercurial 
and spirited of the productions of Shakespear^ 
comic muse. 



LEAR 



We wish that we could pass this play over, 
and say nothing about it. All that we can say 
must fall far short of the subject; or even of 
what we ourselves conceive of it. To attempt 
to give a description of the play itself or of its 
effect upon the mind, is mere impertinence: yet 
we must say something. — It is then the best 
of all Shakespear's plays, for it is the one in 
which he was the most in earnest. He was here 
fairly caught in the web of his own imagination. 
The passion which he has taken as his subject 
is that which strikes its root deepest into the 
human heart ; of which the bond is the hardest 
to be unloosed ; and the cancelling and tearing 
to pieces of which gives the greatest revulsion 
to the frame. This depth of nature, this force 
of passion, this tug and war of the elements of 



154 LEAR. 

our being, this firm faith in filial piety, and 
the giddy anarchy and whirling tumult of the 
thoughts at finding this prop failing it, the 
contrast between the fixed, immoveable basis of 
natural affection, and the rapid, irregular starts 
of imagination, suddenly wrenched from all its 
accustomed holds and resting-places in the soul, 
this is what Shakespear has given, and what 
nobody else but he could give. So we believe. 
— The mind of Lear staggering between the 
weight of attachment and the hurried move- 
ments of passion is like a tall ship driven about 
by the winds, buffetted by the furious waves, 
but that still rides above the storm, having its 
anchor fixed in the bottom of the sea; or it is 
like the sharp rock circled by the eddying whirl- 
pool that foams and beats against it, or like the 
solid promontory pushed from its basis by the 
force of an earthquake. 

The character of Lear itself is very finely con- 
ceived for the purpose. It is the only ground 
on which such a story could be built with the 
greatest truth and effect. It is his rash haste, 
his violent impetuosity, his blindness to every 
thing but the dictates of his passions or affec- 
tions, that produces all his misfortunes, that 
aggravates his impatience of them, that enfor- 
ces our pity for him. The part which Cor- 
delia bears in the scene is extremely beautiful : 
the story is almost told in the first words she 



LEAR. 155 

utters. We see at once the precipice on which 
the poor old king stands from his own extrava- 
gant and credulous importunity, the indiscreet 
simplicity of her love (which, to be sure, has a 
little of her father's obstinacy in it) and the 
hollowness of her sisters' pretensions. Almost 
the first burst of that noble tide of passion, 
which runs through the play, is in the remon- 
strance of Kent to his royal master on the in- 
justice of his sentence against his youngest 
daughter — " Be Kent unmannerly, when Lear is 
mad !" This manly plainness which draws down 
on him the displeasure of the unadvised king 
is worthy of the fidelity with which he adheres 
to his fallen fortunes. The true character of 
the two eldest daughters, Regan and Gonerill 
(they are so thoroughly hateful that we do not 
even like to repeat their names) breaks out in 
their answer to Cordelia who desires them to 
treat their father well — " Prescribe not us our 
duties" — their hatred of advice being in propor- 
tion to their determination to do wrong, and to 
their hypocritical pretensions to do right. Their 
deliberate hypocrisy adds the last finishing to 
the odiousness of their characters. It is the 
absence of this detestable quality that is the 
only relief in the character of Edmund the Bas- 
tard, and that at times reconciles us to him. 
We are not tempted to exaggerate the guilt of 
his conduct, when he himself gives it up as 



156 LEAR. 

a bad business, and writes himself down " plain 
villain." Nothing more can be said about it. His 
religious honesty in this respect is admirable. 
One speech of his is worth a million. His father, 
Gloster, whom he has just deluded with a forged 
Story of his brother Edgar's designs against his 
life, accounts for his unnatural behaviour and 
the strange depravity of the times from the late 
eclipses in the sun and moon. Edmund, who 
is in the secret, says when he is gone — " This 
is the excellent foppery of the world, that when 
we are sick in fortune (often the surfeits of our 
own behaviour) we make guilty of our disasters 
the sun, the moon, and stars : as if we were 
villains on necessity; fools by heavenly compul- 
sion ; knaves, thieves, and treacherous by sphe- 
rical predominance ; drunkards, liars, and adul- 
terers by an enforced obedience of planetary 
influence ; and all that we are evil in, by a di- 
vine thrusting on. An admirable evasion of 
whore-master man, to lay his goatish disposition 
on the charge of a star ! My father compounded 
with my mother under the Dragon's tail, and my 
nativity was under Ursa Major : so that it follows, 
I am rough and lecherous. I should have been 
what I am, had the maidenliest star in the fir- 
mament twinkled on my bastardising." — The 
whole character, its careless, light-hearted vil- 
lainy, contrasted with the sullen, rancorous 
malignity of Regan and Gonerill, its connection 



LEAR. 157 

with the conduct of the under-plot, in which 
Gloster's persecution of one of his sons and the 
ingratitude of another, form a counterpart to the 
mistakes and misfortunes of Lear, — his double 
amour with the two sisters, and the share which 
he has in bringing about the fatal catastrophe, 
are all managed with an uncommon degree of 
skill and power. 

It has been said, and we think justly, that the 
third act of Othello and the three first acts of 
Lear, are Shakespear's great master-pieces in 
the logic of passion: that they contain the high- 
est examples not only of the force of individual 
passion, but of its dramatic vicissitudes and 
striking effects arising from the different circum- 
stances and characters of the persons speaking. 
We see the ebb and flow of the feeling, its 
pauses and feverish starts, its impatience of op- 
position, its accumulating force when it has 
time to recollect itself, the manner in which it 
avails itself of every passing word or gesture, its 
haste to repel insinuation, the alternate contrac- 
tion and dilatation of the soul, and all " the daz- 
zling fence of controversy" in this mortal combat 
with poisoned weapons, aimed at the heart, 
where each wound is fatal. We have seen in 
Othello, how the unsuspecting frankness and 
impetuous passions of the Moor are played 
upon and exasperated by the artful dexteri- 
ty of Iago. In the present play, that which 



158 LEAR. 

aggravates the sense of sympathy in the rea- 
der, and of uncontroulable anguish in the 
swoln heart of Lear, is the petrifying indif- 
ference, the cold, calculating, obdurate self- 
ishness of his daughters. His keen passions 
seem whetted on their stony hearts. The con- 
trast would be too painful, the shock too great, 
but for the intervention of the Fool, whose well- 
timed levity comes in to break the continuity of 
feeling when it can no longer be borne, and to 
bring into play again the fibres of the heart just 
as they are growing rigid from over-strained 
excitement. The imagination is glad to take 
refuge in the half-comic, half-serious comments 
of the Fool, just as the mind under the extreme 
anguish of a surgical operation vents itself in 
sallies of wit. The character was also a gro- 
tesque ornament of the barbarous times, in 
which alone the tragic ground-work of the story 
could be laid. In another point of view it is 
indispensable, inasmuch as while it is a diver- 
sion to the too great intensity of our disgust, it 
carries the pathos to the highest pitch of which 
it is capable, by shewing the pitiable weakness 
of the old king's conduct and its irretrievable 
consequences in the most familiar point of view. 
Lear may well " beat at the gate which let his 
folly in," after, as the Fool says, " he has made 
his daughters his mothers." The character is 



LEAR. 159 

dropped in the third act to make room for the 
entrance of Edgar as Mad Tom, which well ac- 
cords with the increasing bustle and wildness of 
the incidents ; and nothing can be more com- 
plete than the distinction between Lear's real 
and Edgar's assumed madness, while the resem- 
blance in the cause of their distresses, from the 
severing of the nearest ties of natural affection, 
keeps up a unity of interest. Shakespear's 
mastery over his subject, if it was not art, was 
owing to a knowledge of the connecting links of 
the passions, and their effect upon the mind, 
still more wonderful than any systematic adhe- 
rence to rules, and that anticipated and outdid 
all the efforts of the most refined art, not in- 
spired and rendered instinctive by genius. 

One of the most perfect displays of dramatic 
power is the first interview between Lear and his 
daughter, after the designed affronts upon him, 
which till one of his knights reminds him of 
them, his sanguine temperament had led him to 
overlook. He returns with his train from hunt- 
ing, and his usual impatience breaks out in his 
first words, " Let me not stay a jot for dinner; 
go, get it ready." He then encounters the faith- 
ful Kent in disguise, and retains him in his 
service ; and the first trial of his honest duty is 
to trip up the heels of the officious Steward 
who makes so prominent and despicable a figure 



160 LEAR. 

through the piece. On the entrance of Gonerill 
the following dialogue takes place: — 

<c Lear. How now, daughter r what makes that front- 
let on ? 
Methinks, you are too much of late i' the frown. 

Fool. Thou wast a pretty fellow, when thou had'st no 
need to care for her frowning ; now thou art an O without 
a figure : I am better than thou art now ; lama fool, thou 

art nothing. Yes, forsooth, I will hold my tongue 3 [To 

Gonerill.'] so your face bids me, though you say nothing. 
Mum, mum. 

He that keeps nor crust nor crum, 
Weary of all, shall want some- 

That's a sheal'd peascod ! [Pointing to Lear. 

Gonerill. Not only, sir, this your all-licens'd fool, 
But other of your insolent retinue 
Do hourly carp and quarrel ; breaking forth 
In rank and not -to-be-endured riots. 
I had thought, by making this well known unto you, 
To have found a safe redress ; but now grow fearful. 
By what yourself too late have spoke and done, 
That you protect this course, and put it on 
By your allowance 5 which if you should, the fault 
"Would not 'scape censure, nor the redresses sleep, 
Which in the tender of a wholesome weal, 
Might in their working do you that offence, 
(Which else were shame) that then necessity 
Would call discreet proceeding. 
Fool. For you trow, nuncle, 

The hedge sparrow fed the cuckoo so long, 
That it had its head bit off by its young. 

So out went the candle, and we were left darkling. 



LEAR. 161 

Lear. Are you our daughter ? 
Gonerill. Come, sir, 
I would, you would make use of that good wisdom 
Whereof I know you are fraught ; and put away 
These dispositions, which of late transform you 
From what you rightly are. 

Fool. May not an ass know when the cart draws the 
horse ? Whoop, Jug, I love thee. 

Lear. Does any here know me ? Why, this is not 

Lear : 
Does Lear walk thus ? speak thus ? — Where are his eyes ? 
Either his notion weakens, or his discernings 

Are lethargy'd Ha ! waking ? — Tis not so. 

Who is it that can tell me who I am J — Lear's shadow? 

I would learn that : for by the marks 

Of sov'reignty, of knowledge, and of reason, 

I should be false persuaded I had daughters. 

Your name, fair gentlewoman ? 

Gonerill. Come, sir : 
This admiration is much o' the favour 
Of other your new pranks. I do beseech you 
To understand my purposes aright : 
As you are old and reverend, you should be wise : 
Here do you keep a hundred knights and squires ; 
Men so disorder'd, so debauch'd, and bold, 
That this our court, infected with their manners, 
Shews like a riotous inn : epicurism and lust 
Make it more like a tavern, or a brothel, 
Than a grac'd palace. The shame itself doth speak 
For instant remedy : be then desir'd 
By her, that else will take the thing she begs, 
A little to disquantity your train ; 
And the remainder, that shall still depend, 
To be such men as may besort your age, 
And know themselves and you. 
M 



162 LEAR. 

Lear. Darkness and devils ! 

Saddle my horses ; call my train together. 

Degenerate bastard ! I'll not trouble thee j 
Yet have I left a daughter. 

Gonerill. You strike my people ; and your disorder'd 
rabble 
Make servants of their betters. 

Enter Albany. 

Lear. Woe, that too late repents — O, sir, are you come ? 

Is it your will ? speak, sir. — Prepare my horses. 

[To Albany. 
Ingratitude ! thou marble-hearted fiend, 
More hideous, when thou shew'st thee in a child, 
Than the sea-monster ! 

Albany. Pray, sir, be patient. 

Lear. Detested kite ! thou liest. [To Gonerill. 

My train are men of choice and rarest parts, 
That all particulars of duty know ; 
And in the most exact regard support 

The worships of their name. O most small fault, 

How ugly didst thou in Cordelia shew ! 

Which, like an engine, wrench'd my frame of nature 

From the fixt place ; drew from my heart all love, 

And added to the gall. O Lear, Lear, Lear ! 

Beat at the gate, that let thy folly in, [Striking his head. 

And thy dear judgment out ! Go, go, my people ! 

Albany. My lord, I am guiltless, as I am ignorant 
Of what hath mov'd you. 

Lear. It may be so, my lord 

Hear, nature, hear ! dear goddess, hear ! 
Suspend thy purpose, if thou didst intend 
To make this creature fruitful ! 
Into her womb convey sterility ; 



LEAR. 163 

Dry up in her the organs of increase 5 

And from her derogate body never spring 

A babe to honour her ! If she must teem, 

Create her child of spleen : that it may live, 

To be a thwart disnatur'd torment to her ! 

Let it stamp wrinkles in her brow of youth 5 

With cadent tears fret channels in her cheeks 5 

Turn all her mother's pains, and benefits, 

To laughter and contempt 5 that she may feel 

How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is 

To have a thankless child ! Away, away ! [Exit. 

Albany. Now, gods, that we adore, whereof comes this ? 

Gonerill. Never afflict yourself to know the cause ; 
But let his disposition have that scope 
That dotage gives it. 

Re-enter Lear. 

Lear. What, fifty of my followers at a clap ! 
Within a fortnight ! 

Albany. What's the matter, sir? 

Lear. I'll tell thee 5 life and death ! I am asham'd 
That thou hast power to shake my manhood thus : 

{To Gonerill. 
That these hot tears, which break from me perforce, 
Should make thee worth them. ■ B lasts and fogs upon 

thee! 
The untented woundings of a father's curse 

Pierce every sense about thee ! Old fond eyes 

Beweep this cause again, I'll pluck you out ; 
And cast you, with the waters that you lose, 

To temper clay. Ha ! is it come to this ? 

Let it be so : Yet have I left a daughter, 

Who, I am sure, is kind and comfortable ; 
When she shall hear this of thee, with her nails 
She'll flea thy wolfish visage. Thou shalt find, 



164 LEAR. 

That I'll resume the shape, which thou dost think 
I have cast off for ever. 

[Exeunt Lear, Kent, and Attendants.*' 

This is certainly fine : no wonder that Lear 
says after it, " O let me not be mad, not mad, 
sweet heavens," feeling its effects by anticipa- 
tion : but fine as is this burst of rage and indig- 
nation at the first blow aimed at his hopes and 
expectations, it is nothing near so fine as what fol- 
lows from his double disappointment, and his 
lingering efforts to see which of them he shall 
lean upon for support and find comfort in, when 
both his daughters turn against his age and 
weakness. It is with some difficulty that Lear 
gets to speak with his daughter Regan, and her 
husband, at Gloster's castle. In concert with 
Gonerill they have left their own home on pur- 
pose to avoid him. His apprehensions are 
first alarmed by this circumstance, and when 
Gloster, whose guests they are, urges the fiery 
temper of the Duke of Cornwall as an excuse 
for not importuning him a second time, Lear 
breaks out, 

' f Vengeance ! Plague ! Death ! Confusion ! 
Fiery ? What fiery quality ? Why, Gloster, 
I'd speak with the Duke of Cornwall and his wife." 

Afterwards, feeling perhaps not well himself, 
he is inclined to admit their excuse from illness, 
but then recollecting that they have set his mes- 



LEAR. 165 

senger (Kent) in the stocks, all his suspicions 
are roused again, and he insists on seeing them. 

" Enter Cornwall, Regan, Gloster, and Servants. 

Lear. Good-morrow to you both. 

Cornwall. Hail to your grace ! [Kent is set at liberty. 

Regan. I am glad to see your highness. 

Lear. Regan, I think you are ; I know what reason 
I have to think so : if thou should'st not be glad, 
I would divorce me from thy mother's tomb, 

Sepulchring an adultress. O, are you free ? 

[To Kent. 
Some other time for that. Beloved Regan, 

Thy sister's naught : O Regan, she hath tied 

Sharp-tooth' d unkindness, like a vulture, here 

[Points to his heart. 
I can scarce speak to thee -, thou'lt not believe, 
Of how deprav'd a quality O Regan ! 

Regan. I pray you, sir, take patience ; I have hope 
You less know how to value her desert, 
Than she to scant her duty. 

Lear. Say, how is that ? 

Regan. I cannot think my sister in the least 
Would fail her obligation j if, sir, perchance, 
She have restrain' d the riots of your followers, 
'Tis on such ground, and to such wholesome end, 
As clears her from all blame. 

Lear. My curses on her ! 

Regan. O, sir, you are old ; 
Nature in you stands on the very verge 
Of her confine : you should be rul'd, and led 
By some discretion, that discerns your state 
Better than you yourself : therefore, I pray you, 
That to our sister you do make return -, 
Say, you have wrong' d her, sir. 



166 LEAR. 

Lear. Ask her forgiveness } 
Do you but mark l\ow this becomes the use ? 
Dear daughter, I confess that I am old ; 
Age is unnecessary ; on my knees I beg, 
That you'll vouchsafe me raiment, bed, and food. 

Regan. Good sir, no more j these are unsightly tricks : 
Return you to my sister. 

Lear. Never, Regan: 
She hath abated me of half my train -, 
Look'd blank upon me j struck me with her tongue, 

Most serpent-like, upon the very heart : 

All the stor'd vengeances of heaven fall 

On her ungrateful top ! Strike her young bones, 

You taking airs, with lameness ! 

Cornwall. Fie, sir, fie ! 

Lear. You nimble lightnings, dart your blinding flames 
Into her scornful eyes ! Infect her beauty, 
You fen-suck' d fogs, drawn by the powerful sun, 
To fall, and blast her pride ! 

Regan. O the blest gods ! 
So will you wish on me, when the rash mood is on. 

Lear. No, Regan, thou shalt never have my curse -, 
Thy tender -hefted nature shall not give 
Thee o'er to harshness ; her eyes are fierce, but thine 
Do comfort, and not burn : 'Tis not in thee 
To grudge my pleasures, to cut off my train, 
To bandy hasty words, to scant my sizes, 
And, in conclusion, to oppose the bolt 
Against my coming in : thou better know'st 
The offices of nature, bond of childhood, 
Effects of courtesy, dues of gratitude ; 
Thy half o' the kingdom thou hast not forgot, 
Wherein I thee endow'd. 



LEAR. 167 

Regan. Good sir, to the purpose. [Trumpets within. 
Lear. Who put my man i' the stocks } 
Cornwall. What trumpet's that > 

Enter Steward. 

Regan. I know't, my sister's • this approves her letter, 
That she would soon be here. — Is your lady come ? 

Lear. This is a slave, whose easy-borrow'd pride 

Dwells in the fickle grace of her he follows : 

Out, varlet, from my sight ! 

Cornwall. What means your grace ? 

Lear. Who stock'd my servant ? Regan, I have good 
hope 
Thou did'st not know on't. — — Who comes here ? O 
heavens, 

Enter Gone rill. 

If you do love old men, if your sweet sway 

Allow obedience, if yourselves are old, 

Make it your cause 5 send down, and take my part ! — 

Art not asham'd to look upon this beard? — [lb Goner ill. 

O, Regan, wilt thou take her by the hand ? 

Gonerill. Why not by the hand, sir ? How have I of- 
fended ? 
All's not offence, that indiscretion finds, 
And dotage terms so. 

Lear. O, sides, you are too tough ! 
Will you yet hold ? — How came my man i' the stocks ? 

Cornwall. I set him there, sir : but his own disorders 
Deserv'd much less advancement. 

Lear. You ! did you ? 

Regan. I pray you, father, being weak, seem so. 
If, till the expiration of your month, 
You will return and sojourn with my sister, 
Dismissing half your train, come then to me} 



168 LEAR. 

I am now from home,, and out of that provision 
Which shall be needful for your entertainment. 

Lear. Return to her, and fifty men dismiss'd ? 
No, rather I abjure all roofs, and choose 

To be a comrade with the wolf and owl 

To wage against the enmity o' the air* 

Necessity's sharp pinch ! Return with her ! 

Why, the hot-blooded France, that dowerless took 
Our youngest born, I could as well be brought 
To knee his throne, and squire-like pension beg 

To keep base life afoot. Return with her ! 

Persuade me rather to be slave and sumpter 

To this detested groom. [Looking on the Steward. 

Gonerill. At your choice, sir. 

Lear. Now, I pr'ythee, daughter, do not make me mad j 
I will not trouble thee, my child ; farewell : 

We'll no more meet, no more see one another : 

But yet thou art my flesh, my blood, my daughter j 

Or, rather, a disease that's in my flesh, 

Which I must needs call mine : thou art a bile, 

A plague-sore, an embossed carbuncle, 

In my corrupted blood. But I'll not chide thee ; 

Let shame come when it will, I do not call it : 

I did not bid the thunder-bearer shoot, 

Nor tell tales of thee to high-judging Jove : 

Mend, when thou canst ; be better, at thy leisure : 

I can be patient ; I can stay with Regan, 

I, and my hundred knights. 

Regan. Not altogether so, sir ; 
I look'd not for you yet, nor am provided 
For your fit welcome : Give ear, sir, to my sister j 
For those that mingle reason with your passion 

Must be content to think you old, and so 

But she knows what she does. 

Lear. Is this well spoken now ? 






LEAR. 169 

Regan, I dare avouch it, sir : What, fifty followers 2 
Is it not well ? What should you need of more ? 
Yea, or so many ? Sith that both charge and danger 
Speak 'gainst so great a number ? How, in one house, 
Should many people, under two commands, 
Hold amity ? 'Tis hard -, almost impossible. 

Gonerill. Why might not you, my lord, receive at- 
tendance 
From those that she calls servants, or from mine } 

Regan. Why not, my lord ? If then they chanc'd to 
slack you, 
We would controul them : if you will come to me 
(For now I spy a danger) I entreat you 
To bring but five-and- twenty ; to no more 
Will I give place, or notice. 

Lear. I gave you all 

Regan. And in good time you gave it. 
Lear. Made you my guardians, my depositaries ; 
But kept a reservation to be follow'd 
With such a number : what, must I come to you 
With five-and-twenty, Regan ! said you so ? 

Regan. And speak it again, my lord -, no more with me. 
Lear. Those wicked creatures yet do look well-favourM, 
When others are more wicked ; not being the worst, 

Stands in some rank of praise : I'll go with thee -, 

\To Gonerill 
Thy fifty yet doth double five-and-twenty, 
And thou art twice her love. 

Gonerill. Hear me, my lord j 
What need you five-and-twenty, ten, or five, 
To follow in a house, where twice so many 
Have a command to tend you ? 
Regan. What need one ? 

Lear. O, reason not the need : our basest beggars 
Are in the poorest thing superfluous : 



170 LEAR. 

Allow not nature more than nature needs, 

Man's life is cheap as beast's : thou art a lady ; . 

If only to go warm were gorgeous, 

Why, nature needs not what thou gorgeous wear'st 5 

Which scarcely keeps thee warm. But, for true 

need 

You heavens, give me that patience which I need ! 

You see me here, you gods ; a poor old man, 

As full of grief as age ; wretched in both ! 

If it be you that stir these daughters' hearts 

Against their father, fool me not so much 

To bear it tamely j touch me with noble anger ! 

O, let no woman's weapons, water-drops, 

Stain my man's cheeks ! No, you unnatural hags, 

I will have such revenges on you both, 

That all the world shall 1 will do such things 

What they are, yet I know not ; but they shall be 
The terrors of the earth. You think, I'll weep : 

No, I'll not weep : 

I have full cause of weeping ; but this heart 
Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws, 

Or e'er I'll weep : O, fool, I shall go mad ! 

[Exeunt Lear, Gloster, Kent, and jPooZ." 

If there is any thing in any author like this 
yearning of the heart, these throes of tender- 
ness, this profound expression of all that can be 
thought and felt in the most heart-rending situ- 
ations, we are glad of it ; but it is in some au- 
thor that we have not read. 

The scene in the storm, where he is exposed 
to all the fury of the elements, though grand 
and terrible, is not so fine, but the moralising 



LEAR. 171 

scenes with Mad Tom, Kent, and Gloster, are 
upon a par with the former. His exclamation 
in the supposed trial-scene of his daughters, 
" See the little dogs and all, Tray, Blanch, and 
Sweetheart, see they bark at me," his issuing his 
orders, " Let them anatomize Regan, see what 
breeds about her heart/' and his reflection when 
he sees the misery of Edgar, " Nothing but his 
unkind daughters could have brought him to 
this," are in a style of pathos, where the extremest 
resources of the imagination are called in to lay 
open the deepest movements of the heart, which 
was peculiar to Shakespear. In the same style 
and spirit is his interrupting the Fool who asks, 
" whether a madman be a gentleman or a yeo- 
man," by answering " A king, a king !" — 

The indirect part that Gloster takes in these 
scenes where his generosity leads him to relieve 
Lear and resent the cruelty of his daughters, at 
the very time that he is himself instigated to 
seek the life of his son, and suffering under the 
sting of his supposed ingratitude, is a striking 
accompaniment to the situation of Lear. In- 
deed, the manner in which the threads of the 
story are woven together is almost as wonderful 
in the way of art as the carrying on the tide of 
passion, still varying and unimpaired, is on the 
score of nature. Among the remarkable in- 
stances of this kind are Edgar's meeting with 
his old blind father ; the deception he practises 



172 LEAR. 

upon him when he pretends to lead him to the 
top of Dover-cliff — " Come on, sir, here's the 
place/' to prevent his ending his life and mise- 
ries together; his encounter with the perfidious 
Steward whom he kills, and his finding the let- 
ter from Gonerill to his brother upon him which 
leads to the final catastrophe, and brings the 
wheel of Justice " full circle home" to the guilty 
parties. The bustle and rapid succession of 
events in the last scenes is surprising. But the 
meeting between Lear and Cordelia is by far the 
most affecting part of them. It has all the wild- 
ness of poetry, and all the heartfelt truth of na- 
ture. The previous account of her reception of 
the news of his unkind treatment, her involuntary 
reproaches to her sisters, " Shame, ladies, shame," 
Lear's backwardness to see his daughter, the 
picture of the desolate state to which he is re- 
duced, " Alack, 'tis he ; why he was met even 
now, as mad as the vex'd sea, singing aloud," 
only prepare the way for and heighten our expec- 
tation of what follows, and assuredly this ex- 
pectation is not disappointed when through the 
tender care of Cordelia he revives and recollects 
her. 

f ' Cordelia. How does my royal lord 1 How fares your 

majesty ! 
Lear. You do me wrong, to take me out o* the grave : 
Thou art a soul in bliss 5 but I am bound 



LEAH. 173 

Upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears 
Do scald like molten lead. 

Cordelia. Sir, do you know me ? 

Lear. You are a spirit I know : when did you die ? 

Cordelia. Still, still, far wide ! 

Physician. He's scarce awake j let him alone awhile. 

Lear. Where have I been ? Where am I ? — Fair day- 
light 3 

I am mightily abus'd. — I should even die with pity, 

To see another thus.— r4 know not what to say. 

I will not swear these are my hands : — let's see 5 
I feel this pin prick. 'Would I were assur'd 
Of my condition. 

Cordelia. O, look upon me, sir, 
And hold your hands in benediction o'er me :— — 
No, sir> you must not kneel. 

Lear. Pray, do not mock me : 
1 am a very foolish fond old man, 
Fourscore and upward ; 

Not an hour more, nor less : and, to deal plainly, 
I fear, I am not in my perfect mind. 
Methinks, I shou'd know you, and know this man j 
Yet I am doubtful : for I am mainly ignorant 
What place this is ; and all the skill I have 
Remembers not these garments 3 nor 1 know not 
Where I did lodge last night : do not laugh at me ; 
For, as I am a man, I think this lady 
To be my child Cordelia. 

Cordelia. And so I am, I am!" 

Almost equal to this in awful beauty is their 
consolation of each other when, after the triumph 
of their enemies, they are led to prison. 



174 LEAR. 

(l Cordelia. We are not the first, 
Who, with best meaning, have incurr'd the worst. 
For thee, oppressed king, am I cast down 5 
Myself could else out-frown false fortune's frown. — 
Shall we not see these daughters, and these sisters ? 

Lear. No, no, no, no ! Come, let's away to prison : 
We two alone will sing like birds i' the cage : 
When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down, 
And ask of thee forgiveness : so we'll live, 
And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh 
At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues 
Talk of court news ; and we'll talk with them too — 
Who loses, and who wins ; who's in, who's outj — 
And take upon us the mystery of things, 
As if we were God's spies : and we'll wear out, 
In a wall'd prison, packs and sects of great ones, 
That ebb and flow by the moon. 

Edmund. Take them away. 

Lear. Upon such sacrifices, my Cordelia, 
The gods themselves throw incense." 

The concluding events are sad, painfully sad; 
but their pathos is extreme. The oppression of 
the feelings is relieved by the very interest we 
take in the misfortunes of others, and by the re- 
flections to which they give birth. Cordelia is 
hanged in prison by the orders of the bastard 
Edmund, which are known too late to be coun- 
termanded, and Lear dies broken-hearted, la- 
menting over her. 

tc Lear. And my poor fool is hang'd ! No, no, no life : 
Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life, 



LEAR. 175 

And thou no breath at all ? O, thou wilt come no more, 

Never, never, never, never, never ! 

Pray you, undo this button : thank you, sir." 

He dies, and indeed we feel the truth of what 
Kent says on the occasion — 

<l Vex not his ghost : O, let him pass ! he hates him, 
That would upon the rack of this rough world 
Stretch him out longer." 

Yet a happy ending has been contrived for 
this play, which is approved of by Dr. Johnson 
and condemned by Schlegel. A better author- 
ity than either, on any subject in which poetry 
and feeling are concerned, has given it in favour 
of Shakespear, in some remarks on the acting 
of Lear, with which we shall conclude this ac- 
count. 

" The Lear of Shakespear cannot be acted. 
The contemptible machinery with which they 
mimic the storm which he goes out in, is not 
more inadequate to represent the horrors of the 
real elements than any actor can be to represent 
Lear. The greatness of Lear is not in corpo- 
ral dimension, but in intellectual ; the explo- 
sions of his passions are terrible as a volcano : 
they are storms turning up and disclosing to the 
bottom that rich sea, his mind, with all its vast 
riches. It is his mind which is laid bare. This 
case of flesh andjblood seems too insignificant to 
be thought on ; even as he himself neglects it. 



1?6 LEAR. 

On the stage we see nothing but corporal infir- 
mities and weakness, the impotence of rage ; 
while we read it, we see not Lear, but we are 
Lear ; — we are in his mind, we are sustained by 
a grandeur, which baffles the malice of daughters 
and storms ; in the aberrations of his reason, we 
discover a' mighty irregular power of reasoning, 
immethodised from the ordinary purposes of life, 
but exerting its powers, as the wind blows where 
it listeth, at will on the corruptions and abuses of 
mankind. What have looks or tones to do with 
that sublime identification of his age with that of 
the heavens themselves, when in his reproaches to 
them for conniving at the injustice of his chil- 
dren, he reminds them that " they themselves 
are old [" What gesture shall we appropriate 
to this ? What has the voice or the eye to do 
with such things ? But the play is beyond all 
art, as the tamperings with it shew: it is too 
hard and stony : it must have love-scenes, and 
a happy ending. It is not enough that Cordelia 
is a daughter, she must shine as a lover too. 
Tate has put his hook in the nostrils of this 
Leviathan, for Garrick and his followers, the 
shewmen of the scene, to draw it about more 
easily. A happy ending ! — as if the living mar- 
tyrdom that Lear had gone through, — the flaying 
of his feelings alive, did not make a fair dismis- 
sal from the stage of life the only decorous thing 
for him. If he is to live and be happy after, if 
he could sustain this world's burden after, why 



LEAR. 177 

all this pudder and preparation — why torment us 
with all this unnecessary sympathy ? As if the 
childish pleasure of getting his gilt robes and 
sceptre again could tempt him to act over again 
his misused station, — as if at his years and with 
his experience, any thing was left but to die."* 
Four things have struck us in reading Lear: 

1. That poetry is an interesting study, for 
this reason, that it relates to whatever is most 
interesting in human life. Whoever therefore 
has a contempt for poetry, has a contempt for 
himself and humanity. 

2. That the language of poetry is superior to 
the language of painting; because the strongest 
of our recollections relate to feelings, not to faces. 

3. That the greatest strength of genius is 
shewn in describing the strongest passions: for 
the power of the imagination, in works of inven- 
tion, must be in proportion to the force of the na- 
tural impressions, which are the subject of them. 

4. That the circumstance which balances the 
pleasure against the pain in tragedy is, that in 
proportion to the greatness of the evil, is our 
sense and desire of the opposite good excited ; 
and that our sympathy with actual suffering is 
lost in the strong impulse given to our natural 
affections, and carried away with the swelling 
tide of passion, that gushes from and relieves the 
heart. 

* See an article, called Theatralia, in the second volume 
of the Reflectory by Charles Lamb. 

N 



RICHARD II. 



Richard II. is a play little known compared 
with Richard HI. which last is a play that 
every unfledged candidate for theatrical fame 
chuses to strut and fret his hour upon the stage 
in; yet we confess that we prefer the nature 
and feeling of the one to the noise and bustle 
of the other ; at least, as we are so often forced 
to see it acted. In Richard II. the weakness 
of the king leaves us leisure to take a greater 
interest in the misfortunes of the man. After 
the first act, in which the arbitrariness of his 
behaviour only proves his want of resolution, 
we see him staggering under the unlooked-for 
blows of fortune, bewailing his loss of kingly 
power, not preventing it, sinking under the 
aspiring genius of Bolingbroke, his authority 
trampled on, his hopes failing him, and his 
pride crushed and broken down unjler insults 



I 



RICHARD Hi 179 

and injuries, which his own misconduct had 
provoked, but which he has not courage or 
manliness to resent. The change of tone and 
behaviour in the two Competitors for the throne 
according to their change of fortune, from the 
capricious sentence of banishment passed by 
Richard upon Bolingbroke, the suppliant offers 
and modest pretensions of the latter on his return, 
to the high and haughty tone with which he ac- 
cepts Richard's resignation of the crown after the 
loss of all his power, the use which he makes of 
the deposed king to grace his triumphal progress 
through the streets of London, and the final 
intimation of his wish for his death, which im- 
mediately finds a servile executioner, is marked 
throughout with complete effect and without 
the slightest appearance of effort. The steps 
by which Bolingbroke mounts the throne are 
those by which Richard sinks into the grave. 
We feel neither respect nor love for the deposed 
monarch; for he is as wanting in energy as in 
principle: but we pity him, for he pities him- 
self. His heart is by no means hardened against 
himself, but bleeds afresh at every new stroke 
of mischance, and his sensibility, absorbed in 
his own person, and unused to misfortune, is 
not only tenderly alive to its own sufferings, 
but without the fortitude to bear them. He is, 
however, human in his distresses; for to feel 
pain, and sorrow, weakness, disappointment, 



180 RICHARD II. 

remorse and anguish, is the lot of humanity, and 
we sympathize with him accordingly. The suf- 
ferings of the man make us forget that he ever 
was a king. 

The right assumed by sovereign power to 
trifle at its will with the happiness of others as a 
matter of course, or to remit its exercise as a 
matter of favour, is strikingly shewn in the sen- 
tence of banishment so unjustly pronounced on 
Bolingbroke and Mowbray, and in what Boling- 
broke says when four years of his banishment 
are taken off, with as little reason. 

*'*■ How long a time lies in one little word ! 
Four lagging winters and four wanton springs 
End in a word : such is the breath of kings." 

A more affecting image of the loneliness of a 
state of exile can hardly be given than by what 
Bolingbroke afterwards observes of his having 
" sighed his English breath in foreign clouds;" 
or than that conveyed in Mowbray's complaint 
at being banished for life. 

<c The language I have learned these forty years. 
My native English, now I must forego ; 
And now my tongue's use is to me no more 
Than an unstringed viol or a harp, 
Or like a cunning instrument cas'd up, 
Or being open, put into his hands 
That knows no touch to tune the harmony. 
I am too old to fawn upon a nurse, 
Too far in years to be a pupil now." — 



RICHARD II. 181 

How very beautiful is all this, and at the same 
time how very English too ! 

Richard II. may be considered as the first of 
that series of English historical plays, in which 
" is hung armour of the invincible knights of 
old," in which their hearts seem to strike against 
their coats of mail, where their blood tingles for 
the fight, and words are but the harbingers of 
blows. Of this state of accomplished barba- 
rism the appeal of Bolingbroke and Mowbray 
is an admirable specimen. Another of these 
" keen encounters of their wits," which serve 
to whet the talkers* swords, is where Aumerle 
answers in the presence of Bolingbroke to the 
charge which Bagot brings against him of being 
an accessory in Gloster's death. 

c ' Fitzwater. If that thy valour stand on sympathies, 
There is my gage, Aumerle, in gage to thine ; 
By that fair sun that shows me where thou stand' st 
I heard thee say, and vauntingly thou spak'st it, 
That thou wert cause of noble Gloster's death. 
If thou deny'st it twenty times thou liest, 
And I will turn thy falsehood to thy heart 
Where it was forged, with my rapier's point. 

Aumerle. Thou dar'st not, coward, live to see the day. 

Fitzwater. Now, by my soul, I would it were this, hour. 

Aumerle. Fitzwater, thou art damn'd to hell for this. 

Percy. Aumerle, thou liest ; his honour is as true, 
In this appeal, as thou art all unjust ; 
And that thou art so, there I throw my gage 
To prove it on thee, to th' extremest point 
Of mortal breathing. Seize it, if thou dar'st. 



182 RICHARD II. 

Aumerle. And if I do not, may my hands rot off, 
And never brandish more revengeful steel 
Over the glittering helmet of my foe. 
Who sets me else ? By heav'n, I'll throw at all. 
I have a thousand spirits in my breast, 
To answer twenty thousand such as you. 

Surry. My lord Fitzwater, I remember well 
The very time Aumerle and you did talk. 

Fitzwater. My lord, 'tis true : you were in presence then: 
And you can witness with me, this is true. 

Surry. As false, by heavn, as heav'n itself is true. 
Fitzwater. Surry, thou liest. 
Surry. Dishonourable boy, 
That lie shall lye so heavy on my sword, 
That it shall render vengeance and revenge, 
Till thou the lie-giver and that lie rest 
In earth as quiet as thy father's skull. 
In proof whereof, there is mine honour's pawn : 
Engage it to the trial, if thou dar'st. 

Fitzwater. How fondly dost thou spur a forward horse : 
If 1 dare eat or drink or breathe or live, 
I dare meet Surry in a wilderness, 
And spit upon him, whilst I say he lies, 
And lies, and lies : there is my bond of faith, 
To tie thee to thy strong correction. 
As I do hope to thrive in this new world, 
Aumerle is guilty of my true appeal." 

The truth is, that there is neither truth nor 
honour in all these noble persons : they answer 
words with words, as they do blows with blows, 
in mere self defence : nor have they any prin- 
ciple whatever but that of courage in maintain- 
ing any wrong they dare commit, or any false- 



RICHARD II. 183 

hood which they find it useful to assert. How 
different were these noble knights and " barons 
bold" from their more refined descendants in the 
present day, who instead of deciding questions 
of right by brute force, refer every thing to 
convenience, fashion, and good breeding! In 
point of any abstract love of truth or justice, 
they are just the same now that they were then. 
The characters of old John of Gaunt and of 
his brother York, uncles to the King, the one 
stern and foreboding, the other honest, good- 
natured, doing all for the best, and therefore 
doing nothing, are well kept up. The speech 
of the former, in praise of England, is one of 
the most eloquent that ever was penned. We 
should perhaps hardly be disposed to feed the 
pampered egotism of our countrymen by quoting 
this description, were it not that the conclusion 
of it (which looks prophetic) may qualify any 
improper degree of exultation. 

" This royal throne of kings, this sceptered isle, 
This earth of Majesty, this seat of Mars, 
This other Eden, demi-Paradise, 
This fortress built by nature for herself 
Against infection and the hand of war 3 
This happy breed of men, this little world, 
This precious stone set in the silver sea, 
Which serves it in the office of a wall 
(Or as a moat defensive to a house) 
Against the envy of less happy lands : 
This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings, 



184 RICHARD II. 

Fear'd for their breed and famous for their birth, 
Renown' d for their deeds, as far from home. 
For Christian service and true chivalry, 
As is the sepulchre in stubborn Jewry 
Of the world's ransom, blessed Mary's son ; 
This land of such dear souls, this dear dear land, 
Dear for her reputation through the world, 
Is now leas' d out (I die pronouncing it) 
JL/ike to a tenement or pelting farm. 
England bound in with the triumphant sea, 
Whose rocky shore beats back the envious surge 
Of wat'ry Neptune, is bound in with shame, 
With inky-blots and rotten parchment bonds. 
That England, that was wont to conquer others, 
Hath made a shameful conquest of itself." r 

The character of Bolingbroke, afterwards 
Henry IV. is drawn with a masterly hand : — 
patient for occasion, and then steadily availing 
himself of it, seeing his advantage afar off, but 
only seizing on it when he has it within his reach, 
humble, crafty, bold, and aspiring, encroaching 
by regular but slow degrees, building power on 
opinion, and cementing opinion by power. His 
disposition is first unfolded by Richard himself, 
who however is too self-willed and secure to 
make a proper use of his knowledge. 

" Ourself and Bushy, Bagot here and Green, 
Observed his courtship of the common people : 
How he did seem to dive into their hearts, 
With humble and familiar courtesy, 
What reverence he did throw away on slaves ; 
Wooing poor craftsmen with the craft of smiles, 



RICHARD IT. 185 

And patient under-bearing of his fortune, 

As 'twere to banish their affections with him. 

Off goes his bonnet to an oyster-wench ; 

A brace of draymen bid God speed him well, 

And had the tribute of his supple knee, 

With thanks my countrymen, my loving friends ; 

As were our England in reversion his, 

And he our subjects' next degree in hope." 

Afterwards, he gives his own character to Percy, 
in these words: 

" I thank thee, gentle Percy, and be sure 
I count myself in nothing else so happy, 
As in a soul rememb'ring my good friends 5 
And as my fortune ripens with thy love, 
It shall be still thy true love's recompense." 

We know how he afterwards kept his pro- 
mise. His bold assertion of his own rights, 
his pretended submission to the king, and the 
ascendancy which he tacitly assumes over him 
without openly claiming it, as soon as he has 
him in his power, are characteristic traits of 
this ambitious and politic usurper. But the 
part of Richard himself gives the chief interest 
to the play. His folly, his vices, his misfor- 
tunes, his reluctance to part with the crown, 
his fear to keep it, his weak and womanish 
regrets, his starting tears, his fits of hectic 
passion, his smothered majesty, pass in succes- 
sion before us, and make a picture as natural 
as it is affecting. Among the most striking 



186 RICHARD II. 

touches of pathos are his wish " O that I were 
a mockery king of snow to melt away before 
the sun of Bolingbroke/ 5 and the incident of 
the poor groom who comes to visit him in pri- 
son, and tells him how " it yearned his heart 
that Bolingbroke upon his coronation day rode 
on Roan Barbary." We shall have occasion to 
return hereafter to the character of Richard II. 
in speaking of Henry VI. There is only one 
passage more, the description of his entrance 
into London with Bolingbroke, which we should 
like to quote here, if it had not been so used 
and worn out, so thumbed and got by rote, so 
praised and painted ; but its beauty surmounts 
all these considerations. 

<c Duchess. My lord, you told me you would tell the rest, 
When weeping made you break the story off 
Of our two cousins coming into London. 

York. Where did I leave ? 

Duchess. At that sad stop, my lord, 
Where rude misgovern'd hands, from window tops, 
Threw dust and rubbish on king Richard's head. 

York. Then, as I said, the duke, great Bolingbroke, 
Mounted upon a hot and fiery steed, 
Which his aspiring rider seem'd to know, 
With slow, but stately pace, kept on his course, 
While all tongues cried — God save thee, Bolingbroke ! 
You would have thought the very windows spake, 
So many greedy looks of young and old 
Through casements darted their desiring eyes 
Upon his visage -, and that all the walls, 
With painted imag'ry, had said at once — 



RICHARD II. 18? 

Jesu preserve thee ! welcome, Bolingbroke ! 
Whilst he, from one side to the other turning, 
Bare-headed, lower than his proud steed's neck, 
Bespake them thus — I thank you, countrymen : 
And thus still doing thus he pass'd along. 

Duchess. Alas, poor Richard ! where rides he the while ? 

York. As in a theatre, the eyes of men, 
After a well-grac'd actor leaves the stage, 
Are idly bent on him that enters next, 
Thinking his prattle to be tedious : 
Even so, or with much more contempt, men's eyes 
Did scowl on Richard ; no man cried God save him ! 
No joyful tongue gave him his welcome home : 
But dust was thrown upon his sacred head! 
Which with such gentle sorrow he shook off — 
His face still combating with tears and smiles., 
The badges of his grief and patience — 
That had not God, for some strong purpose, steel'd 
The hearts of men, they must perforce have melted, 
And barbarism itself have pitied him." 



HENRY IV. 

IN TWO PARTS. 



If Shakespear's fondness for the ludicrous some- 
times led to faults in his tragedies (which was 
not often the case) he has made us amends by 
the character of FalstafT. This is perhaps the 
most substantial comic character that ever was 
invented. Sir John carries a most portly pre- 
sence in the mind's eye; and in him, not to 
speak it profanely, " we behold the fulness of 
the spirit of wit and humour bodily." We are 
as well acquainted with his person as his mind, 
and his jokes come upon us with double force 
and relish from the quantity of flesh through 
w r hich they make their way, as he shakes his 
fat sides with laughter, or " lards the lean earth 
as he walks along." Other comic characters 
seem, if we approach and handle them, to re- 
solve themselves into air, " into thin air;" but 
this is embodied and palpable to the grossest 



HENRY IV. 189 

apprehension: it lies ''• three fingers deep upon 
the ribs," it plays about the lungs and the 
diaphragm with all the force of animal enjoy- 
ment. His body is like a good estate to his 
mind, from which he receives rents and revenues 
of profit and pleasure in kind, according to its 
extent, and the richness of the soil. Wit is 
often a meagre substitute for pleasurable sen- 
sation ; an effusion of spleen and petty spite 
at the comforts of others, from feeling none in 
itself. FalstafFs wit is an emanation of a fine 
constitution; an exuberance of good -humour 
and good-nature ; an overflowing of his love 
of laughter, and good-fellowship ; a giving vent 
to his heart's ease and over-contentment with 
himself and others. He would not be in cha- 
racter, if he were not so fat as he is; for there is 
the greatest keeping in the boundless luxury 
of his imagination and the pampered self-indul- 
gence of his physical appetites. He manures 
and nourishes his mind with jests, as he does 
his body with sack and sugar. He carves out 
his jokes, as he would a capon, or a haunch of 
venison, where there is cut and come again; 
and pours out upon them the oil of gladness. 
His tongue drops fatness, and in the chambers 
of his brain " it snows of meat and drink." He 
keeps up perpetual holiday and open house, 
and we live with him in a round of invitations 
to a rump and dozen. — Yet we are not to sup- 



190 HENRY IV. 

pose that he was a mere sensualist. All this 
is as much in imagination as in reality. His 
sensuality does not engross and stupify his other 
faculties, but " ascends me into the brain, clears 
away all the dull, crude vapours that environ 
it, and makes it full of nimble, fiery, and delec- 
table shapes." His imagination keeps up the 
ball after his senses have done with it. He 
seems to have even a greater enjoyment of the 
freedom from restraint, of good cheer, of his 
ease, of his vanity, in the ideal exaggerated de- 
scriptions which he gives of them, than in fact. 
He never fails to enrich his discourse with allu- 
sions to eating and drinking, but we never see 
him at table. He carries his own larder about 
with him, and he is himself " a tun of man." 
His pulling out the bottle in the field of battle 
is a joke to shew his contempt for glory accom- 
panied with danger, his systematic adherence 
to his Epicurean philosophy in the most trying 
circumstances. Again, such is his deliberate 
exaggeration of his own vices, that it does not 
seem quite certain whether the account of his 
hostess's bill, found in his pocket, with such an 
out-of-the-way charge for capons and sack with 
only one halfpenny-worth of bread, was not put 
there by himself as a trick to humour the jest 
upon his favourite propensities, and as a con- 
scious caricature of himself. He is represented 
as a liar, a braggart, a coward, a glutton, &c. 



HENRY IV. 191 

and yet we are not offended but delighted with 
him; for he is all these as much to amuse others 
as to gratify himself. He openly assumes all 
these characters to shew the humourous part of 
them, » The unrestrained indulgence of his own 
ease, appetites, and convenience, has neither ma- 
lice nor hypocrisy in it. In a word, he is an actor 
in himself almost as much as upon the stage, and 
we no more object to the character of Falstaffin 
a moral point of view than we should think of 
bringing an excellent comedian, who should re- 
present him to the life, before one of the police 
offices. We only consider the number of plea- 
sant lights in which he puts certain foibles (the 
more pleasant as they are opposed to the re- 
ceived rules and necessary restraints of society) 
and do not trouble ourselves about the conse- 
quences resulting from them, for no mischie- 
vous consequences do result. Sir John is old 
as well as fat, which gives a melancholy retro- 
spective tinge to the character; and by the dis- 
parity between his inclinations and his capacity 
for enjoyment, makes it still more ludicrous and 
fantastical. 

The secret of Falstaff^s wit is for the most 
part a masterly presence of mind, an absolute 
self-possession, which nothing can disturb. His 
repartees are involuntary suggestions of his self- 
love; instinctive evasions of every thing that 
threatens to interrupt the career of his trium- 



192 HENRY IV. 

phant jollity and self-complacency M His very 
size floats him out of all his difficulties in a sea 
of rich conceits; and he turns round on the pivot 
of his convenience, with every occasion and at 
a moment's warning. His natural repugnance 
to every unpleasant thought or circumstance of 
itself makes light of objections, and provokes 
the most extravagant and licentious answers in 
his own justification. His indifference to truth 
puts no check upon his invention, and the more 
improbable and unexpected his contrivances are, 
the more happily does he seem to be delivered 
of them, the anticipation of their effect acting 
as a stimulus to the gaiety of his fancy. The 
success of one adventurous sally gives him spirits 
to undertake another: he deals always in round 
numbers, and his exaggerations and excuses are 
" open, palpable, monstrous as" the father that 
begets them. 3 ' His dissolute carelessness of 
what he says discovers itself in the first dialogue 
with the Prince. 

" Falstaff. By the lord, thou say'st true, lad 5 and is not 
mine hostess of the tavern a most sweet wench ? 

P. Henry. As the honey of Hibla, my old lad of the cas- 
tle ; and is not a buff-jerkin a most sweet robe of durance? 

Falstaff. How now, how now, mad wag, what in thy 
quips and thy quiddities ? what a plague have I to do with 
a buff-jerkin? 

P. Henry. Why, what a pox have I to do with mine hos- 
tess of the tavern?" 



HENRY IV. 193 

In the same scene he afterwards affects me- 
lancholy, from pure satisfaction of heart, and 
professes reform, because it is the farthest thing 
in the world from his thoughts. He has no 
qualms of conscience, and therefore would as 
soon talk of them as of any thing else when the 
humour takes him. 

" Falstaff. But Hal, I pr'ythee trouble me no more with 
vanity. I would to God thou and I knew where a commo- 
dity of good names were to be bought : an old lord of coun- 
cil rated me the other day in the street about you, sir ; but 
I mark'd him not, and yet he talked very wisely, and in 
the street too. 

P. Henry.* Thou didst well, for wisdom cries out in the 
street, and no man regards it. 

Falstaff. O, thou hast damnable iteration, and art indeed 
able to corrupt a saint. Thou hast done much harm unto 
me, Hal ; God forgive thee for it. Before I knew thee, 
Hal, I knew nothing, and now 1 am, if a man should speak 
truly, little better than one of the wicked. I must give 
over this life, and I will give it over, by the lord j an I do 
not, I am a villain. I'll be damn'd for never a king's son 
in Christendom. 

P. Henry. Where shall we take a purse to-morrow, Jack ? 

Falstaff. Where thou wilt, lad, I'll make one j an I do 
not, call me villain, and baffle me. 

P. Henry. I see good amendment of life in thee, from 
praying to purse-taking. 

Falstaff. Why, Hal, 'tis my vocation, Hal. 'Tis no sin 
for a man to labour in his vocation." 

Of the other prominent passages, his account 
of his pretended resistance to the robbers, " who 

o 



194 HENRY IV. 

grew from four men in buckram into eleven" as 
the imagination of his own valour increased with 
his relating it, his getting off when the truth is 
discovered by pretending he knew the Prince, 
the scene in which in the person of the old king 
he lectures the prince and gives himself a good 
character, the soliloquy on honour, and descrip- 
tion of his new-raised recruits, his meeting with 
the chief justice, his abuse of the Prince and 
Poins, who overhear him, to Doll Tearsheet, 
his reconciliation with Mrs. Quickly who has 
arrested him for an old debt, and whom he per- 
suades to pawn her plate to lend him ten pounds 
more, and the scenes with Shallow and Silence, 
are all inimitable. Of all of them, the scene in 
which FalstafT plays the part, first, of the King, 
and then of Prince Henry, is the one that has 
been the most often quoted. We must quote 
it once more in illustration of our remarks. 

f ' Falstaff. Harry, I do not only marvel where thou spendest 
thy time, but also how thou art accompanied i for though 
the camomile, the more it is trodden on, the faster it grows, 
yet youth, the more it is wasted, the sooner it wears. That 
thou art my son, I have partly thy mother's word, partly 
my own opinion j but chiefly, a villainous trick of thine eye, 
and a foolish hanging of thy nether lip, that doth warrant 

me. If then thou be son to me, here lies the point 3 

Why, being son to me, art thou so pointed at ? Shall the 
blessed sun of heaven prove a micher, and eat blackberries ? 
A question not to be ask'd. Shall the son of England prove 
a thief, and take purses ? a question not to be ask'd. There 



HENRY IV. 195 

is a thing, Harry, which thou hast often heard of, and it is 
known to many in our land by the name of pitch : this pitch, 
as ancient writers do report, doth defile ; so doth the com- 
pany thou keepest : for, Harry, now I do not speak to thee 
in drink, but in tears j not in pleasure, but in passion ; not 
in words only, but in woes also : — and yet there is a virtu- 
ous man, whom I have often noted in thy company, but I 
know not his name. 

P. Henry. What manner of man, an it like your majesty? 

Falstaff. A goodly portly man, i' faith, and a corpulent ; 
of a cheerful look, a pleasing eye, and a most noble carri- 
age ; and, as I think, his age some fifty, or, by'r-lady, in- 
clining to threescore j and now I do remember me, his 
name is Falstaff: if that man should be lewdly given, he 
deceiveth me ; for, Harry, I see virtue in his looks. If 
then the fruit may be known by the tree, as the tree by the 
fruit, then peremptorily I speak it, there is virtue in that 
Falstaff: him keep with, the rest banish. And tell me 
now, thou naughty varlet, tell me, where hast thou been 
this month ? 

P. Henry. Dost thou speak like a king ? Do thou stand 
for me, and I'll play my father. 

Falstaff. Depose me ? if thou dost it half so gravely, so 
majestically, both in word and matter, hang me up by the 
heels for a rabbit-sucker, or a poulterer's hare. 

P. Henry. Well, here I am set. 

Falstaff. And here I stand : — judge, my masters. 

P. Henry. Now, Harry, whence come you? 

Falstaff. My noble lord, from Eastcheap. 

P. Henry. The complaints I hear of thee are grievous. 

Falstaff. S'blood, my lord, they are false : — nay, I'll tickle 
ye for a young prince, i' faith. 

P. Henry. Swearest thou, ungracious boy ? henceforth 
ne'er look on me. Thou art violently carried away from 
grace : there is a devil haunts thee, in the likeness of a fat 



196 HENRY IV. 

old man ; a tun of man is thy companion. Why dost thou 
converse with that trunk of humours, that bolting-hutch 
of beastliness, that swoln parcel of dropsies, that huge bom- 
bard of sack, that stuft cloak-bag of guts, that roasted 
Manning-tree ox with the pudding in his belly, that rever- 
end vice, that grey iniquity, that father ruffian, that vanity 
in years ? wherein is he good, but to taste sack and drink 
it ? wherein neat and cleanly, but to carve a capon and eat 
it ? wherein cunning, but in craft ? wherein crafty, but in 
villainy \ wherein villainous, but in all things ? wherein 
worthy, but in nothing ? 

Falstaff. 1 would, your grace would take me with you ; 
whom means your grace \ 

P. Henry. That villainous, abominable mis-leader of youth, 
Falstaff, that old white-bearded Satan. 

Falstaff. My lord, the man I know. 

P. Henry. I know thou dost. 

Falstaff. But to say, I know more harm in him than in 
myself, were to say more than I know. That he is old (the 
more the pity) his white hairs do witness it : but that he is 
(saving your reverence) a whore-master, that I utterly deny. 
If sack and sugar be a fault, God help the wicked ! if to 
be old and merry be a sin, then many an old host that I 
know is damned : if to be fat be to be hated, then Pha- 
roah's lean kine are to be loved. No, my good lord ; banish 
Peto, banish Bardolph, banish Poins : but for sweet Jack 
Falstaff, kind Jack Falstaff, true Jack Falstaff, valiant Jack 
Falstaff, and therefore more valiant, being as he is, old 
Jack Falstaff, banish not him thy Harry's company; banish 
plump Jack, and banish all the world. 

P. Henry. I do, I will. 

[Knocking ; and Hostess and Bardolph go out. 
Re-enter Bardolph, running. 

Bardolph. O, my lord, my lord ; the sheriff, with a most 
monstrous watch, is at the door. 



HE1STRY IV. 197 

Falstaff. Out, you rogue ! play out the play : I have much 
to say in the behalf of that Falstaff." 

One of the most characteristic descriptions of 
Sir John is that which Mrs. Quickly gives of him 
when he asks her " What is the gross sum that 
I owe thee ?" 

" Hostess. Marry, if thou wert an honest man, thyself, 
and the money too. Thou didst swear to me upon a parcel- 
gilt goblet, sitting in my Dolphin-chamber, at the round 
table, by a sea- coal fire on Wednesday in Whitsun-week, 
when the prince broke thy head for likening his father to a 
singing man of Windsor ; thou didst swear to me then, as 
I was washing thy wound, to marry me, and make me my 
lady thy wife. Canst thou deny it? Did not goodwife 
Keech, the butcher's wife, come in then, and call me gossip 
Quickly } coming in to borrow a mess of vinegar j telling 
us, she had a good dish of prawns ; whereby thou didst de- 
sire to eat some j whereby I told thee, they were ill for a 
green wound ? And didst thou not, when she was gone 
down stairs, desire me to be no more so familiarity with 
such poor people ; saying, that ere long they should call 
me madam? And didst thou not kiss me, and bid me 
fetch thee thirty shillings ? I put thee now to thy book- 
oath ; deny it, if thou canst." 

This scene is to us the most convincing proof 
of FalstafFs power of gaining over the good will 
of those he was familiar with, except indeed 
Bardolph's somewhat profane exclamation on 
hearing the account of his death, " Would I were 



198 HENRY IV. 

with him, wheresoever he is, whether in hea- 
ven or hell/' 

One of the topics of exulting superiority 
over others most common in Sir John's mouth 
is his corpulence and the exterior marks of good 
living which he carries about him, thus " turn- 
ing his vices into commodity." He accounts for 
the friendship between the Prince and Poins, 
from " their legs being both of a bigness ;" and 
compares Justice Shallow to " a man made after 
supper of a cheese-paring." There cannot be 
a more striking gradation of character than that 
between Falstaffand Shallow, and Shallow and 
Silence. It seems difficult at first to fall lower 
than the squire ; but this fool, great as he is, 
finds an admirer and humble foil in his cousin 
Silence. Vain of his acquaintance with Sir 
John, who makes a butt of him, he exclaims, 
" Would, cousin Silence, that thou had'st seen 
that which this knight and I have seen !" — 
" Aye, Master Shallow, we have heard the 
chimes at midnight," says Sir John. To Fal- 
stafFs observation " I did not think Master Si- 
lence had been a man of this mettle," Silence 
answers, " Who, I ? I have been merry twice 
and once ere now." What an idea is here con- 
veyed of a prodigality of living } What good 
husbandry and economical self-denial in his 
pleasures ? What a stock of lively recollee- 



HENRY IV. 199 

tions ? It is curious that Shakespear has ridi- 
culed in Justice Shallow, who was " in some 
authority under the king/' that disposition to 
unmeaning tautology which is the regal infir- 
mity of later times, and which, it may be sup- 
posed, he acquired from talking to his cousin 
Silence, and receiving no answers. 

" Falstaff. You have here a goodly dwelling, and a rich. 

Shallow. Barren, barren, barren; beggars all, beggars 
all, Sir John : marry, good air. Spread Davy, spread Davy. 
Well said, Davy. 

Falstaff. This Davy serves you for good uses. 

Shallow. A good varlet, a good varlet, a very good varlet. 
By the mass, I have drank too much sack at supper. A good 
varlet. Now sit down, now sit down. Come, cousin." 

The true spirit of humanity, the thorough 
knowledge of the stuff we are made of, the prac- 
tical wisdom with the seeming fooleries in the 
whole of the garden-scene at Shallow's country- 
seat, and just before in the exquisite dialogue 
between him and Silence on the death of old 
Double, have no parallel any where else. In 
one point of view, they are laughable in the ex- 
treme ; in another they are equally affecting, if 
it is affecting to shew what a little thing is hu- 
man life, what a poor forked creature man is ! 

The heroic and serious part of these two plays 
founded on the story of Henry IV. is not in- 
ferior to the comic and farcical. The characters 



200 HENRY IV. 

of Hotspur and Prince Henry are two of the 
most beautiful and dramatic, both in them- 
selves and from contrast, that ever were drawn. 
They are the essence of chivalry. We like 
Hotspur the best upon the whole, perhaps 
because he was unfortunate.— The characters 
of their fathers, Henry IV. and old Northum- 
berland, are kept up equally well. Henry na- 
turally succeeds by his prudence and caution 
in keeping what he has got ; Northumberland 
fails in his enterprise from an excess of the same 
quality, and is caught in the web of his own 
cold, dilatory policy. Owen Glendower is a 
masterly character. It is as bold and original 
as it is intelligible and thoroughly natural. The 
disputes between him and Hotspur are managed 
with infinite address and insight into nature. 
We cannot help pointing out here some very 
beautiful lines, where Hotspur describes the 
fight between Glendower and Mortimer. 

te When on the gentle Severn's sedgy bank., 

In single opposition hand to hand. 

He did confound the best part of an hour 

In changing hardiment with great Glendower : 

Three times they breath'd, and three times did they drink, 

Upon agreement, of swift Severn's flood 5 

Who then affrighted with their bloody looks, 

Ran fearfully among the trembling reeds, 

And hid his crisp head in the hollow bank, 

Blood-stained with these valiant combatants." 



HENRY IV. 201 

The peculiarity and the excellence of Shake- 
spear's poetry is, that it seems as if he made his 
imagination the hand-maid of nature, and nature 
the play-thing of his imagination. He appears 
to have been all the characters, and in all the 
situations he describes. It is as if either he had 
had all their feelings, or had lent them all his 
genius to express themselves. There cannot 
be stronger instances of this than Hotspur's rage 
when Henry IV. forbids him to speak of Mor- 
timer, his insensibility to all that his father and 
uncle urge to calm him, and his fine abstracted 
apostrophe to honour, " By heaven methinks 
it were an easy leap to pluck bright honour from 
the moon," &c. After all, notwithstanding the 
gallantry, generosity, good temper, and idle 
freaks of the mad-cap Prince of Wales, we 
should not have been sorry, if Northumber- 
land's force had come up in time to decide the 
fate of the battle at Shrewsbury; at least, we 
always heartily sympathise with Lady Percy's 
grief, when she exclaims, 

" Had my sweet Harry had but half their numbers, 
To-day might I (hanging on Hotspur's neck) 
Have talked of Monmouth's grave." 

The truth is, that we never could forgive the 
Prince's treatment of Falstaff; though perhaps 
Shakespear knew what was best, according to 



202 HENRY IV. 

the history, the nature of the times, and of the 
man. We speak only as dramatic critics. What- 
ever terror the French in those days might 
have of Henry V. yet to the readers of poetry 
at present, FalstarT is the better man of the 
two. We think of him and quote him oftener. 



HENRY V. 



Henry V. is a very favourite monarch with 
the English nation, and he appears to have 
been also a favourite with Shakespear, who la- 
bours hard to apologise for the actions of the 
king, by shewing us the character of the man, 
as " the king of good fellows." He scarcely 
deserves this honour. He was fond of war and 
low company : — we know little else of him. He 
was careless, dissolute, and ambitious; — idle, 
or doing mischief. In private, he seemed to 
have no idea of the common decencies of life, 
which he subjected to a kind of regal licence ; 
in public affairs, he seemed to have no idea of 
any rule of right or wrong, but brute force, 
glossed over with a little religious hypocrisy and 
archiepiscopal advice. His principles did not 
change with his situation and professions. His 
adventure on Gadshill was a prelude to the 



204 HENRY V. 

affair of Agincourt, only a bloodless one ; FalstarT 
was a puny prompter of violence and outrage, 
compared with the pious and politic Archbishop 
of Canterbury, who gave the king carte blanche^ 
in a genealogical tree of his family, to rob and 
murder in circles of latitude and longitude abroad 
! — to save the possessions of the church at home. 
This appears in the speeches in Shakespear, 
where the hidden motives that actuate princes 
and their advisers in war and policy are better 
laid open than in speeches from the throne or 
woolsack. Henry, because he did not know 
how to govern his own kingdom, determined to 
make war upon his neighbours. Because his 
own title to the crown was doubtful, he laid 
claim to that of France. Because he did not 
know how to exercise the enormous power, 
which had just dropped into his hands, to any 
one good purpose, he immediately undertook 
(a cheap and obvious resource of sovereignty) 
to do all the mischief he could. Even if abso- 
lute monarchs had the wit to find out objects of 
laudable ambition, they could only " plume up 
their wills" in adhering to the more sacred for- 
mula of the royal prerogative, " the right divine 
of kings to govern wrong," because will is only 
then triumphant when it is opposed to the will 
of others, because the pride of power is only 
then shewn, not when it consults the rights 
and interests of others, but when it insults and 



HENRY V. 205 

tramples on all justice and all humanity. Henry 
declares his resolution " when France is his, to 
bend it to his awe, or break it all to pieces" — 
a resolution worthy of a conqueror, to destroy 
all that he cannot enslave; and what adds to the 
joke, he lays all the blame of the consequences 
of his ambition on those who will not submit 
tamely to his tyranny. Such is the history of 
kingly power, from the beginning to the end of 
the world ; — with this difference, that the ob- 
ject of war formerly, when the people adhered 
to their allegiance, was to depose kings ; the 
object latterly, since the people swerved from 
their allegiance, has been to restore kings, and 
to make common cause against mankind. The 
object of our late invasion and conquest of 
France was to restore the legitimate monarch, 
the descendant of Hugh Capet, to the throne : 
Henry V. in his time made war on and deposed 
the descendant of this very Hugh Capet, on the 
plea that he was a usurper and illegitimate. 
What would the great modern cats paw of legi- 
timacy and restorer of divine right have said to 
the claim of Henry and the title of the descen- 
dants of Hugh Capet? Henry V. it is true> 
was a hero, a king of England, and the con- 
queror of the king of France. Yet we feel little 
love or admiration for him. He was a hero, 
that is, he was readv to sacrifice his own life 
for the pleasure of destroying thousands of other 



20G HENRY V. 

lives: he was a king of England, but not a 
constitutional one, and we only like kings ac- 
cording to the law ; lastly, he was a conqueror 
of the French king, and for this we dislike him 
less than if he had conquered the French people. 
How then do we like him ? We like him in 
the play. There he is a very amiable monster, 
a very splendid pageant. As we like to gaze at 
a panther or a young lion in their cages in the 
Tower, and catch a pleasing horror from their 
glistening eyes, their velvet paws, and dreadless 
roar, so we take a very romantic, heroic, patrio- 
tic, and poetical delight in the boasts and feats 
of our younger Harry, as they appear on the 
stage and are confined to lines of ten syllables ; 
where no blood follows the stroke that wounds 
our ears, where no harvest bends beneath horses* 
hoofs, no city flames, no little child is but- 
chered, no dead men's bodies are found piled on 
heaps and festering the next morning— in the 
orchestra ! 

So much for the politics of this play; now for 
the poetry. Perhaps one of the most striking 
images in all Shakespear is that given of war in 
the first lines of the Prologue. 

" O for a muse of fire, that would ascend 
The brightest heaven of invention, 
A kingdom for a stage, princes to act, 
And monarchs to behold the swelling scene ! 
Then should the warlike Harry, like himself, 



HENRY V. 207 

Assume the port of Mars, and at his heels 

Leastid in like hounds, should famine, sword, and fire 

Crouch for employment." 

Rubens, if he had painted it, would not have 
improved upon this simile. 

The conversation between the Archbishop of 
Canterbury and the Bishop of Ely relating to 
the sudden change in the manners of Henry V. 
is among the well-known Beauties of Shake- 
spear. It is indeed admirable both for strength 
and grace. It has sometimes occurred to us 
that Shakespear, in describing " the reforma- 
tion" of the Prince, might have had an eye to 
himself — 

<c Which is a wonder how his grace should glean it, 

Since his addiction was to courses vain, 

His companies unletter'd, rude and shallow, 

His hours fill'd up with riots, banquets, sports 5 

And never noted in him any study, 

Any retirement, any sequestration 

From open haunts and popularity. 

Ely. The strawberry grows underneath the nettle, 
And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best 
Neighbour' d by fruit of baser quality : 
And so the prince obscur'd his contemplation 
Under the veil of wildness, which no doubt 
Grew like the summer-grass, fastest by night, 
Unseen, yet crescive in his faculty." 

This at least is as probable an account of the 
progress of the poet's mind as we have met with 



208 HENRY V. 

iu any of the Essays on the Learning of Shake- 
spear. 

Nothing can be better managed than the cau- 
tion which the king gives the meddling Arch- 
bishop, not to advise himself rashly to engage in 
the war with France, his scrupulous dread of 
the consequences of that advice, and his eager 
desire to hear and follow it. 

<e And God forbid, my dear and faithful lord, 
That you should fashion, wrest, or bow your reading, 
Or nicely charge your understanding soul 
With opening titles miscreate, whose right 
Suits not in native colours with the truth. 
For God doth know how many now in health 
Shall drop their blood, in approbation 
Of what your reverence shall incite us to. 
Therefore take heed how you impawn your person, 
How you awake our sleeping sword of war ; 
We charge you in the name of God, take heed. 
For never two such kingdoms did contend 
Without much fall of blood, whose guiltless drops 
Are every one a woe, a sore complaint 
'Gainst him, whose wrong gives edge unto the swords 
That make such waste in brief mortality. 
Under this conjuration, speak, my lord ; 
For we will hear, note, and believe in heart, 
That what you speak, is in your conscience wash'd, 
As pure as sin with baptism." 

Another characteristic instance of the blind- 
ness of human nature to every thing but its 
own interests is the complaint made by the 



HENRY V. <209 

king of " the ill neighbourhood" of the Scot 
in attacking England when she was attacking 
France. 

" For once the eagle England being in prey, 
To her unguarded nest the weazel Scot 
Comes sneaking, and so sucks her princely eggs." 

It is worth observing that in all these plays, 
which give an admirable picture of the spirit of 
the good old times, the moral inference does not 
at all depend upon the nature of the actions, but 
on the dignity or meanness of the persons com- 
mitting them. " The eagle England" has a right 
" to be in prey," but " the weazel Scot" has 
none " to come sneaking to her nest," which 
she has left to pounce upon others. Might was 
rihgt, without equivocation or disguise, in that 
heroic and chivalrous age. The substitution of 
right for might, even in theory, is among the 
refinements and abuses of modern philosophy. 

A more beautiful rhetorical delineation of the 
effects of subordination in a commonwealth can 
hardly be conceived than the following : — 

« ]? or government, though high and low and lower, 
Put into parts, doth keep in one consent, 
Congruing in a full and natural close, 
Like music. 

Therefore heaven doth divide 

The state of man in divers functions, 
Setting endeavour in continual motion j 
To which is fixed, as an aim or butt, 
P 



210 HENHY V. 

Obedience : for so work the honey bees ; 
Creatures that by a rule in nature, teach 
The art of order to a peopled kingdom. 
They have a king, and officers of sorts 
Where some, like magistrates, correct at home ; 
, Others, like merchants, venture trade abroad ; 
Others, like soldiers, armed in their stings, 
Make boot upon the summer's velvet buds -, 
Which pillage they with merry march bring home 
To the tent-royal of their emperor -, 
Who, busied in his majesty, surveys 
The singing mason building roofs of gold, 
The civil citizens kneading up the honey, 
The poor mechanic porters crowding in* 
Their heavy burthens at his narrow gate ; 
The sad-eyed justice, with his surly hum, 
Delivering o'er to executors pale 
The lazy yawning drone. I this infer, 
That many things, having full reference 
To one consent, may work contrariously : 
As many arrows, loosed several ways, 
Come to one mark , as many ways meet in one town ; 
As many fresh streams meet in one salt sea ; 
As many lines close in the dial's centre ; 
So may a thousand actions, once a-foot, 
End in one purpose, and be all well borne 
Without defeat." 

Henry V. is but one of Shakespear's second- 
rate plays. Yet by quoting passages, like this, 
from his second-rate plays alone, we might make 
a volume " rich with his praise," 

f ' As is the oozy bottom of the sea 

With sunken wrack and sumless treasuries." 



HENRY V 211 

Of this sort are the king's remonstrance to 
Scroop, Grey, and Cambridge, on the detection 
of their treason, his address to the soldiers at 
the siege of Harfleur, and the srill finer one 
before the battle of Agincourt, the description 
of the night before the battle, and the reflections 
on ceremony put into the mouth of the king. 

ei O hard condition ; twin-born with greatness, 
Subjected to the breath of every fool, 
Whose sense no more can feel but his own wringing ! 
What infinite heart's ease must kings neglect, 
That private men enjoy ? and what have kings, 
That privates have not too, save ceremony ? 
Save general ceremony ? 
And what art thou, thou idol ceremony : 
What kind of god art thou, that suffer' st more 
Of mortal griefs, than do thy worshippers ? 
What are thy rents ? what are thy comings-in ? 
O ceremony, shew me but thy worth ! 
What is thy soul, O adoration ? 
Art thou aught else but place, degree, and form, 
Creating awe and fear in other men ? 
Wherein thou art less happy, being feared, 
Than they in fearing. 

What drink' st thou oft, instead of homage sweet, 
But poison'd flattery ? O, be sick, great greatness, 
And bid thy ceremony give thee cure ! 
Think'st thou, the fiery fever will go out 
With titles blown from adulation ? 
Will it give place to flexure and low bending ? 
Canst thou, when thou command'st the beggar's knee, 
Command the health of it > No, thou proud dream, 
That play'st so subtly with a king's repose, 



212 HENRY V. 

I am a king, that find thee : and I know, 

'Tis not the balm, the sceptre, and the ball, 

The sword, the mace, the crown imperial, 

The enter- tissu'd robe of gold and pearl, 

The farsed title running 'fore the king, 

The throne he sits on, nor the tide of pomp 

That beats upon the shore of the world, 

No, not all these, thrice-gorgeous ceremony, 

Not all these, laid in bed majestical, 

Can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave j 

Who, with a body fill'd, and vacant mind, 

Gets him to rest, cramm'd with distressful bread, 

Never sees horrid night, the child of hell : 

Kut, like a lacquey, from the rise to set, 

Sweats in the eye of Phoebus, and all night 

Sleeps in Elysium ; next day, after dawn, 

Doth rise, and help Hyperion to his horse ; 

And follows so the ever- running year 

With profitable labour, to his grave : 

And, but for ceremony, such a wretch, 

Winding up days with toil, and nights with sleep, 

Has the forehand and vantage of a king. 

The slave, a member of the country's peace, 

Enjoys it ; but in gross brain little wots, 

What watch the king keeps to maintain the peace, 

Whose hours the peasant best advantages." 

Most of these passages are well known: there 
is one, which we do not remember to have seen 
noticed, and vet it is no whit inferior to the rest 
in heroic beauty. It is the account of the deaths 
of York and Suffolk. 

11 Exeter. The duke of York commends him to your 
majesty. 



HENRY. V. 213 

A". Henry. Lives he, good uncle ? thrice within this hour, 
I saw him clown ; thrice up again, and fighting ; 
From helmet to the spur all blood he was. 

Exeter. In which array (brave soldier) doth he lie, 
Larding the plain : and by his bloody side 
(Yoke-fellow to his honour-owing wounds) 
The noble earl of Suffolk also lies. 
Suffolk first died : and York,, all haggled o'er, 
Comes to him, where in gore he lay insteepd, 
And takes him by the beard ; kisses the gashes, 
That bloodily did yawn upon his face ; 
And cries aloud — Tarry, dear cousin Suffolk ! 
My soul shall thine keep company to heaven : 
Tarry, sweet soul, for mine, thenjiy a-breast; 
As, in this glorious and well-foitghten field, 
We kept together in our chivalry ! 
Upon these words I came, and cheer' d him up : 
He smil'd me in the face, raught me his hand, 
And, with a feeble gripe, says — Dear my lord, 
Commend my service to my sovereign. 
So did he turn, and over Suffolk's neck 
He threw his wounded arm, and kiss'd his lips ; 
And so, espous'd to death, with blood he seal'd 
A testament of noble-ending love." 

But we must have done with splendid quota- 
tions. The behaviour of the king, in the diffi- 
cult and doubtful circumstances in which he is 
placed, is as patient and modest as it is spirited 
and lofty in his prosperous fortune. The cha- 
racter of the French nobles is also very admira- 
bly depicted ; and the DauphiiVs praise of his 
horse shews the vanity of that class of persons 
in a very striking point of view. Shakespear 



214 HENRY V. 

always accompanies a foolish prince with a sati- 
rical courtier, as we see in this instance. The 
comic parts of Henry V. are very inferior to 
those of Henry IV. Falstaff is dead, and with- 
out him, Pistol, Nym, and Bardolph, are satel- 
lites without a sun. Fluellen the Welchman is 
the most entertaining character in the piece. 
He is good-natured, brave, choleric, and pedan- 
tic. His parallel between Alexander and Harry 
of Monmouth, and his desire to have " some 
disputations" with Captain Macmorris on the 
discipline of the Roman wars, in the heat of 
the battle, are never to be forgotten. His treat- 
ment of Pistol is as good as Pistol's treatment 
of his French prisoner. There are two other 
remarkable prose passages in this play: the con- 
versation of Henry in disguise with the three 
centinels on the duties of a soldier, and his 
courtship of Katherine in broken French. We 
like them both exceedingly, though the first 
savours perhaps too much of the king, and the 
last too little of the lover. 



HENRY VI. 

IN THREE PARTS. 



During the time of the civil wars of York and 
Lancaster, England was a perfect bear-garden, and 
Shakespear has given us a very lively picture of 
the scene. The three parts of Henry VI. con- 
vey a picture of very little else ; and are inferior 
to the other historical plays. They have bril- 
liant passages ; but the general ground-work is 
comparatively poor and meagre, the style " flat 
and unraised." There are few lines like the fol- 
lowing : — 

" Glory is like a circle in the water j 
Which never ceaseth to enlarge itself, 
Till by broad spreading it disperse to nought." 

The first part relates to the wars in France 
after the death of Henry V. and the story of the 
Maid of Orleans. She is here almost as scurvily 



216 . HENRY VI. 

treated as in Voltaire's Pucelle. Talbot is a 
very magnificent sketch : there is something as 
formidable in this portrait of him, as there would 
be in a monumental figure of him or in the sight 
of the armour which he wore. The scene in 
which he visits the Countess of Auvergne, who 
seeks to entrap him, is a very spirited one, and 
his description of his own treatment while a 
prisoner to the French not less remarkable. 

" Salisbury. Yet tell'st thou not how thou wert enter - 
tain'd. 

Talbot. With scoffs and scorns, and contumelious taunts, 
In open market-place produced they me, 
To be a public spectacle to all. 
Here, said they, is the terror of the French, 
The scarecrow that affrights our children so. 
Then broke I from the officers that led me, 
And with my nails digg'd stones out of the ground, 
To hurl at the beholders of my shame. 
My grisly countenance made others fly, 
None durst come near for fear of sudden death. 
In iron walls they deem'd me not secure : 
So great a fear my name amongst them spread, 
That they suppos'd I could rend bars of steel, 
And spurn in pieces posts of adamant. 
Wherefore a guard of chosen shot I had : 
They walk'd about me every minute-while j 
And if I did but stir out of my bed, 
Ready they were to shoot me to the heart." 

The second part relates chiefly to the con- 
tests between the nobles during the minority of 



HENRY VI 217 

Henry, and the death of Gloucester, the good 
Duke Humphrey. The character of Cardinal 
Beaufort is the most prominent in the group: 
the account of his death is one of our author's 
master-pieces. So is the speech of Gloucester 
to the nobles on the loss of the provinces of 
France by the king's marriage with Margaret of 
Anjou. The pretensions and growing ambition 
of the Duke of York, the father of Richard III. 
are also very ably developed. Among the epi- 
sodes, the tragi-comedy of Jack Cade, and the 
detection of the impostor Simcox are truly edi- 
fying. 

The third part describes Henry's loss of his 
crown : his death takes place in the last act, 
which is usually thrust into the common acting 
play of Richard III. The character of Glouces- 
ter, afterwards King Richard, is here very pow- 
erfully commenced, and his dangerous designs 
and long-reaching ambition are fully described in 
his soliloquy in the third act, beginning, " Aye, 
Edward will use women honourably." Henry 
VI. is drawn as distinctly as his high-spirited 
Queen, and notwithstanding the very mean 
figure which Henry makes as a king, we still 
feel more respect for him than for his wife. 

We have already observed that Shakespear 
was scarcely more remarkable for the force and 
marked contrasts of his characters than for the 
truth and subtlety with which he has distin- 



218 HENRY VI. 

guished those which approached the nearest to 
each other. For instance, the soul of Othello 
is hardly more distinct from that of Iago than 
that of Desdemona is shewn to be from iEmi- 
lia's ; the ambition of Macbeth is as distinct 
from the ambition of Richard III. as it is from 
the meekness of Duncan ; the real madness of 
Lear is as different from the feigned madness of 
Edgar* as from the babbling of the fool ; the 
contrast between wit and folly in Falstaff and 
Shallow is not more characteristic though more 
obvious than the gradations of folly, loquacious 
or reserved, in Shallow and Silence ; and again, 
the gallantry of Prince Henry is as little con- 
founded with that of Hotspur as with the cow- 
ardice of Falstaff, or as the sensual and philoso- 
phic cowardice of the Knight is with the pitiful 
and cringing cowardice of Parolles. All these 
several personages were as different in Shake- 
spear as they would have been in themselves: his 
imagination borrowed from the life, and every 
circumstance, object, motive, passion, operated 
there as it would in reality, and produced a 
world of men and women as distinct, as true and 
as various as those that exist in nature. The 
peculiar property of Shakespear's imagination 

* There is another instance of the same distinction in 
Hamlet and Ophelia. Hamlet's pretended madness would 
make a very good real madness in any other author. 



HENRY VI. 219 

was this truth, accompanied with the uncon- 
sciousness of nature : indeed, imagination to be 
perfect must be unconscious, at least in produc- 
tion ; for nature is so. — We shall attempt one 
example more in the characters of Richard II. 
and Henry VI. 

The characters and situations of both these 
persons were so nearly alike, that they would 
have been completely confounded by a com- 
mon-place poet. Yet they are kept quite dis- 
tinct in Shakespear. Both were kings, and both 
unfortunate. Both lost their crowns owing to 
their mismanagement and imbecility ; the one 
from a thoughtless, wilful abuse of power, the 
other from an indifference to it. The manner 
in which they bear their misfortunes corresponds 
exactly to the causes which led to them. The 
one is always lamenting the loss of his power 
which he has not the spirit to regain ; the other 
seems only to regret that he had ever been king, 
and is glad to be rid of the power, with the trou- 
ble ; the effeminacy of the one is that of a vo- 
luptuary, proud, revengeful, impatient of con- 
tradiction, and inconsolable in his misfortunes ; 
the effeminacy of the other is that of an indo- 
lent, good-natured mind, naturally averse to the 
turmoils of ambition and the cares of greatness, 
and who wishes to pass his time in monkish in- 
dolence and contemplation. — Richard bewails 
the loss of the kingly power only as it was the 



220 HENRY VI. 

means of gratifying his pride and luxury ; Henry 
regards it only as a means of doing right, and 
is less desirous of the advantages to be derived 
from possessing it than afraid of exercising it 
wrong. In knighting a young soldier, he gives 
him ghostly advice — 

<e Edward Plantagenet, arise a knight, 

And learn this lesson, draw thy sword in right." 

Richard II. in the first speeches of the play 

betravs his real character. In the first alarm of 

*> 

his pride, on hearing of Bolingbroke's rebellion, 
before his presumption has met with any check, 
he exclaims — 

" Mock not my senseless conjuration, lords : 
This earth shall have a feeling, and these stones 
Prove armed soldiers, ere her native king 
Shall faulter under proud rebellious arms. 
************* 

Not all the water in the rough rude sea 

Can wash the balm from an anointed king ; 

The breath of worldly man cannot depose 

The Deputy elected by the Lord. 

For every man that Bolingbroke hath prest, 

To lift sharp steel against our golden crown, 

Heaven for his Richard hath in heavenly pay 

A glorious angel ; then if angels fight, 

Weak men must fall; for Heaven still guards the right." 

Yet, notwithstanding this royal confession of 
faith, on the very first news of actual disaster, 



HENRY VI. 221 

all his conceit of himself as the peculiar favour- 
ite of Providence vanishes into air. 

" But now the blood of twenty thousand men 
Did triumph in my face, and they are fled. 
All souls that will be safe fly from my side 5 
For time hath set a blot upon my prides" 

Immediately after, however, recollecting that 
" cheap defence" of the divinity of kings which 
is to be found in opinion, he is for arming his 
name against his enemies. 

f ' Awake, thou coward Majesty, thou sleep'st $ 
Is not the King's name forty thousand names } 
Arm, arm, my name : a puny subject strikes 
At thy great glory." 

King Henry does not make any such vapour- 
ing resistance to the loss of his crown, but lets 
it slip from off his head as a weight which he is 
neither able nor willing to bear; stands quietly 
by to see the issue of the contest for his king- 
dom, as if it were a game at push-pin, and is 
pleased when the odds prove against him. 

When Richard first hears of the death of his 
favourites, Bushy, Bagot, and the rest, he indig- 
nantly rejects all idea of any further efforts, and 
only indulges in the extravagant impatience of 
his grief and his despair, in that fine speech 
which has been so often quoted : — 



222 HENRY VI. 

<c Aumerle. Where is the duke my father, with his power? 

K. Richard. No matter where : of comfort no man speak : 
Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs, 
Make dust our paper, and with rainy eyes 
Write sorrow in the bosom of the earth ! 
Let's chuse executors, and talk of wills : 
And yet not so — for what can we bequeath, 
Save our deposed bodies to the ground ? 
Our lands, our lives, and all are Bolingbroke's, 
And nothing can we call our own but death, 
And that small model of the barren earth, 
Which serves as paste and cover to our bones. 
For heaven's sake let us sit upon the ground, 
And tell sad stories of the death of Kings : 
How some have been depos'd, some slain in war ; 
Some haunted by the ghosts they dispossess'd j 
Some poison'd by their wives, some sleeping kill'd ; 
All murder 'd : — for within the hollow crown, 
That rounds the mortal temples of a king, 
Keeps death his court : and there the antic sits, 
Scoffing his state, and grinning at his pomp ! 
Allowing him a breath, a little scene 
To monarchize, be fear'd, and kill with looks 7 
Infusing him with self and vain conceit — 
As if this flesh, which walls about our life, 
Were brass impregnable ; and, humour' d thus, 
Comes at the last, and, with a little pin, 
Bores through his castle wall, and — farewell king ! 
Cover your heads, and mock not flesh and blood 
With solemn reverence ; throw away respect, 
Tradition, form, and ceremonious duty, 
For you have but mistook me all this while : 
I live on bread like you, feel want, taste grief, 
Need friends, like you ; — subjected thus, 
How can you say to me — I am a king V* 



HENRY VI. 223 

There is as little sincerity afterwards in his 
affected resignation to his fate, as there is forti- 
tude in this exaggerated picture of his misfor- 
tunes before they have happened. 

When Northumberland comes back with the 
message from Bolingbroke, he exclaims, antici- 
pating the result, — 

" What must the king do now ? Must he submit 1 
The king shall do it : must he be depos'd ? 
The king shall be contented : must he lose 
The name of king ? O' God's name let it go. 
I'll give my jewels for a set of beads 5 
My gorgeous palace for a hermitage j 
My gay apparel for an alms-man's gown 5 
My figur'd goblets for a dish of wood 3 
My sceptre for a palmer's walking staff} 
My subjects for a pair of carved saints, 
And my large kingdom for a little grave — 
A little, little grave, an obscure grave." 

How differently is all this expressed in King 
Henry's soliloquy during the battle with Ed- 
ward's party : — 

" This battle fares like to the morning's war, 
When dying clouds contend with growing light, 
What time the shepherd blowing of his nails, 
Can neither call it perfect day or night. 
Here on this mole-hill will I sit me down 5 
To whom God will, there be the victory ! 
For Margaret my Queen and Clifford too 
Have chid me from the battle, swearing both 
They prosper best of all whence I am thence. 
Would I were dead, if God's good will were so. 



224 HENRY VL 

For what is in this world but grief and woe $ 

O God ! methinks it were a happy life 

To be no better than a homely swain, 

To sit upon a hill as I do now, 

To carve out dials quaintly, point by point, 

Thereby to see the minutes how they run : 

How many make the hour full complete, 

How many hours bring about the day, 

How many days will finish up the year, 

How many years a mortal man may live. 

When this is known, then to divide the times : 

So many hours must I tend my flock, 

So many hours must I take my rest, 

So many hours must I contemplate, 

So many hours must I sport myself ; 

So many days my ewes have been with young. 

So many weeks ere the poor fools will yean, 

So many months ere I shall shear the fleece : 

So many minutes, hours, weeks, months, and years 

Past over, to the end they were created, 

Would bring white hairs unto a quiet grave. 

Ah ! what a life were this ! how sweet, how lovely ! 

Gives not the hawthorn bush a sweeter shade 

To shepherds looking on their silly sheep, 

Than doth a rich embroidered canopy 

To kings that fear their subjects' treachery \ 

O yes it doth, a thousand fold it doth. 

And to conclude, the shepherds' homely curds. 

His cold thin drink out of his leather bottle, 

His wonted sleep under a fresh tree's shade, 

All which secure and sweetly he enjoys, 

Is far beyond a prince's delicates, 

His viands sparkling in a golden cup, 

His body couched in a curious bed, 

When care, mistrust, and treasons wait on him." 



HENRY VI. 225 

This is a true and beautiful description of a 
naturally quiet and contented disposition, and 
not, like the former, the splenetic effusion of u 
disappointed ambition. 

In the last scene of Richard II. his despair 
lends him courage : he beats the keeper, slays 
two of his assassins, and dies with imprecations 
in his mouth against Sir Pierce Exton, who 
" had staggered his royal person." Henry, 
when he is seized by the deer-stealers, only 
reads them a moral lecture on the duty of alle- 
giance and the sanctity of an oath ; and when 
stabbed by Gloucester in the Tower, reproaches 
him with his crimes, but pardons him his own 
death. 



RICHARD III. 



?* 



Richard III. may be considered as properly 
a stage-play : it belongs to the theatre, rather 
than to the closet. We shall therefore criticise 
it chiefly with a reference to the manner in 
which we have seen it performed. It is the 
character in which Garrick came out: it was 
the second character in which Mr. Kean ap- 
peared, and in which he acquired his fame. 
Shakespear w 7 e have always with us: actors we 
have only for a few seasons ; and therefore some 
account of them may be acceptable, if not to 
our cotemporaries, to those who come after us, 
if " that rich and idle personage, Posterity," 
should deign to look into our writings. 

It is possible to form a higher conception of the 
character of Richard than that given by Mr. Kean: 
but we cannot imagine any character represented 
with greater distinctness and precision, more 



RICHARD III. 227 

perfectly articulated in every part. Perhaps in- 
deed there is too much of what is technically 
called execution. When we first saw this cele- 
brated actor in the part, we thought he some- 
times failed from an exuberance of manner, and 
dissipated the impression of the general charac- 
ter by the variety of his resources. To be 
complete, his delineation of it should have more 
solidity, depth, sustained and impassioned feel- 
ing, with somewhat less brilliancy, with fewer 
glancing lights, pointed transitions, and panto- 
mimic evolutions. 

The Richard of Shakespear is towering and 
lofty ; equally impetuous and commanding ; 
haughty, violent, and subtle ; bold and treacher- 
ous; confident in his strength as well as in his 
cunning; raised high by his birth, and higher 
by his talents and his crimes; a royal usurper, a 
princely hypocrite, a tyrant and a murderer of 
the house of Plantagenet. 

" But I was born so high ; 

Our aery buildeth in the cedar's top, 

And dallies with the wind, and scorns the sun." 

The idea conveyed in these lines (which are 
lindeed omitted in the miserable medley acted 
for Richard III.) is never lost sight of by 
jShakespear, and should not be out of the actor's 
tind for a moment. The restless and sangui- 
lary Richard is not a man striving to be great, 



223 RICHARD III. 

but to be greater than he is; conscious of his 
strength of will, his power of intellect, his daring 
courage, his elevated station ; and making use of 
these advantages to commit unheard-of crimes, 
and to shield himself from remorse and infamy. 
If Mr. Kean does not entirely succeed in 
concentrating all the lines of the character, as 
drawn by Shakespear, he gives an animation, 
vigour, and relief to the part which we have not 
seen equalled. He is more refined than Cooke; 
more bold, varied, and original than Kemble in 
the same character. In some parts he is defi- 
cient in dignity, and particularly in the scenes 
of state business, he has by no means an air of 
artificial authority. There is at times an aspir- 
ing elevation, an enthusiastic rapture in his ex- 
pectations of attaining the crown, and at others 
a gloating expression of sullen delight, as if he 
already clenched the bauble, and held it in his 
grasp. The courtship scene with Lady Anne is 
an admirable exhibition of smooth and smiling 
villainy. The progress of wily adulation, of 
encroaching humility, is finely marked by his 
action, voice and eye. He seems, like the first 
Tempter, to approach his prey, secure of the 
event, and as if success had smoothed his way 
before him. The late Mr. Cooke's manner of 
representing this scene was more vehement, 
hurried, and full of anxious uncertainty. This, 
though more natural in general, was less in 



RICHARD III. «29 

character in this particular instance. Richard 
should woo less as a lover than as an actor — 
to shew his mental superiority, and power of 
making others the play-things of his purposes. 
Mr. Kean's attitude in leaning against the side 
of the stage before he comes forward to address 
Lady Anne, is one of the most graceful and 
striking ever witnessed on the stage. It would 
do for Titian to paint. The frequent and rapid 
transition of his voice from the expression of 
the fiercest passion to the. most familiar tones 
of conversation was that which gave a peculiar 
grace of novelty to his acting on his first appear- 
ance. This has been since imitated and carica- 
tured by others, and he himself uses the artifice 
more sparingly than he did. His bye-play is 
excellent. His manner of bidding his friends 
" Good night/' after pausing with the point of 
his sword, drawn slowly backward and forward 
on the ground, as if considering the plan of the 
battle next day, is a particularly happy and 
natural thought. He gives to the two last acts 
of the play the greatest animation and effect. 
He fills every part of the stage; and makes up 
for the deficiency of his person by what has 
been sometimes objected to as an excess of ac- 
tion. The concluding scene in which he is 
killed by Richmond is the most brilliant of the 
whole. He fights at last like one drunk with 
wounds ; and the attitude in which he stands 



230 RICHARD III. 

wjth his hands stretched out, after his sword 
is Wrested from him, has a preternatural and 
terrific grandeur, as if his will could not be 
disarmed, and the very phantoms of his despair 
had power to kill. — Mr. Kean has since in a great 
measure effaced the impression of his Richard 
III. by the superior efforts of his genius in 
Othello (his master-piece), in the murder-scene 
in Macbeth, in Richard II. in Sir Giles Over- 
reach, and lastly in Oroonoko ; but we still like 
to look back to his first performance of this 
part, both because it first assured his admirers 
of his future success, and because we bore our 
feeble but, at that time, not useless testimony 
to the merits of this very original actor, on 
which the town was considerably divided for 
no other reason than because they were original. 

The manner in which Shakespear's plays have 
been generally altered or rather mangled by mo- 
dern mechanists, is a disgrace to the English 
stage* The patch-work Richard III. which 
is acted under the sanction of his name, and 
which was manufactured by Cibber, is a striking 
example of this remark. 

The play itself is undoubtedly a very pow- 
erful effusion of Shakespear's genius. The 
ground-work of the character of Richard, that 
mixture of intellectual vigour with moral de- 
pravity, in which Shakespear delighted to shew 
his strength — gave full scope as well as temp- 



RICHARD III. 231 

tation to the exercise of his imagination. The 
character of his hero is almost every where pre- 
dominant, and marks its lurid track throughout. 
The original play is however too long for repre- 
sentation, and there are some few scenes which 
might be better spared than preserved, and by 
omitting which it would remain a complete 
whole. The only rule, indeed, for altering 
Shakespear is to retrench certain passages which 
may be considered either as superfluous or ob- 
solete, but not to add or transpose anything. 
The arrangement and developement of the 
story, and the mutual contrast and combination 
of the dramatis per sonce, are in general as finely 
managed as the developement of the characters 
or the expression of the passions. 

This rule has not been adhered to in the 
present instance. Some of the most important 
and striking passages in the principal character 
have been omitted, to make room for idle and 
misplaced extracts from other plays; the only 
intention of which seems to have been to make 
the character of Richard as odious and disgust- 
ing as possible. It is apparently for no other 
purpose than to make Gloucester stab King 
Henry on the stage, that the fine abrupt intro- 
duction of the character in the opening of the 
play is lost in the tedious whining morality of 
the uxorious king (taken from another play); — 



232 RICHARD III. 

we say tedious, because it interrupts the busi- 
j ness of the scene, and loses its beauty and effect 
by having no intelligible connection with the 
previous character of the mild, well-meaning 
monarch. The passages which the unfortunate 
Henry has to recite are beautiful and pathetic 
in themselves, but they have nothing to do 
with the world that Richard has to " bustle 
in." In the same spirit of vulgar caricature 
is the scene between Richard and Lady Anne 
(when his wife) interpolated without any au- 
thority, merely to gratify this favourite propen- 
sity to disgust and loathing. With the same 
perverse consistency, Richard, after his last fatal 
struggle, is raised up by some Galvanic process, 
to utter the imprecation, without any motive 
but pure malignity, which Shakespear has so 
properly put into the mouth of Northumberland 
on hearing of Percy's death. To make room 
for these worse than needless additions, many 
of the most striking passages in the real play 
have been omitted by the foppery and ignorance 
of the prompt-book critics. We do not mean 
to insist merely on passages which are fine as 
poetry and to the reader, such as Clarence's 
dream, &c. but on those which are important to 
the understanding of the character, and pecu- 
liarly adapted for stage-effect. We will give 
the following as instances among several others. 



RICHARD III. 233 

The first is the scene where Richard enters 
abruptly to the queen and her friends to defend 
himself: — 

" Gloucester. They do me wrong, and I will not endure it. 
Who are they that complain unto the king, 
That I forsooth am stern, and love them not ? 
By holy Paul, they love his grace but lightly, 
That fill his ears with such dissentious rumours : 
Because I cannot flatter and look fair, 
Smile in men's faces, smooth, deceive, and cog, 
Duck with French nods, and apish courtesy, 
I must be held a rancourous enemy. 
Cannot a plain man live, and think no harm, 
But thus his simple truth must be abus'd 
With silken, sly, insinuating Jacks ? 

Gray. To whom in all this presence speaks your grace ? 

Gloucester. To thee, that hast nor honesty nor grace ; 
When have I injur'd thee, when done thee wrong ? 
Or thee ? or thee ? or any of your faction ? 
A plague upon you all!" 

Nothing can be more characteristic than the 
turbulent pretensions to meekness and simpli- 
city in this address. Again, the versatility and 
adroitness of Richard is admirably described in 
the following ironical conversation with Braken- 
bury : — 

(f Brakenbury. I beseech your graces both to pardon me. 
His majesty hath straitly given in charge, 
That no man shall have private conference, 
Of what degree soever, with your brother. 

Gloucester. E'en so, and please your worship, Braken- 
bury, 



234 RICHARD III. 

You may partake of any thing we say : 
We speak no treason, man — we say the king 
Is wise and virtuous, and his noble queen 
Well strook in years, fair, and not jealous. 
We say that Shore's wife hath a pretty foot, 
A cherry lip, a passing pleasing tongue 3 
That the queen's kindred are made gentlefolks. 
How say you, sir ? Can you deny all this ? 

Brakenbury. With this, my lord, myself have nought 
to do. 

Gloucester. What, fellow, naught to do with mistress 
Shore? 
I tell you, sir, he that doth naught with her, 
Excepting one, were best to do it secretly alone. 

Brakenbury. What one, my lord? 

Gloucester. Her husband, knave — would'st thou betray 
me?" 

The feigned reconciliation of Gloucester with 
the queers kinsmen is also a master-piece. 
One of the finest strokes in the play, and which 
serves to shew as much as any thing the deep, 
plausible manners of Richard, is the unsuspect- 
ing security of Hastings, at the very time when 
the former is plotting his death, and when that 
very appearance of cordiality and good-humour 
on which Hastings builds his confidence arises 
from Richard's consciousness of having betrayed 
him to his ruin. This, with the whole charac- 
ter of Hastings, is omitted. 

Perhaps the two most beautiful passages in 
the original play are the farewel apostrophe of 
the queen to the Tower, where her children are 



RICHARD III. 935 

shut up from her, and Tyrrel's description of 
their death. We will finish our quotations with 
them. 

". Queen. Stay, yet look back with me unto the Tower ; 
Pity, you ancient stones, those tender babes, 
Whom envy hath immured within your walls j 
Rough cradle for such little pretty ones, 
Rude, rugged nurse, old sullen play-fellow, 
For tender princes !" 

The other passage is the account of their death 
by Tyrrel : — 

" Dighton and Forrest, whom I did suborn 
To do this piece of ruthless butchery, 
Albeit they were flesh'd villains, bloody dogs, 
Wept like to children in their death's sad story : 
O thus ! quoth Dighton, lay the gentle babes ; 
Thus, thus, quoth Forrest, girdling one another 
Within their innocent alabaster arms ; 
Their lips were four red roses on a stalk, 
And in that summer beauty kissed each other -, 
A book of prayers on their pillow lay, 
Which once, quoth Forrest, almost changed my mind : 
But oh the devil! — there the villain stopped j 
When Dighton thus told on — we smothered 
The most replenished sweet work of nature, 
That from the prime creation ere she framed." 

These are some of those wonderful bursts 
of feeling, done to the life, to the very height 
of fancy and nature, which our Shakespear 
alone could give. We do not insist on the 



236 RICHARD III. 

repetition of these last passages as proper for 
the stage: we should indeed be loth to trust 
them in the mouth of almost any actor: but we 
should wish them to be retained in preference at 
least to the fantoccini exhibition of the young 
princes, Edward and York, bandying childish 
wit with their uncle. 



HENRY VIII. 



This play contains little action or violence of 
passion, yet it has considerable interest of a more 
mild and thoughtful cast, and some of the most 
striking passages in the author's works. The 
character of Queen Katherine is the most per- 
fect delineation of matronly dignity, sweetness* 
and resignation, that can be conceived. Her 
appeals to the protection of the king, her re- 
monstrances to the cardinals, her conversations 
with her women, shew a noble and generous 
spirit accompanied with the utmost gentleness 
of nature. What can be more affecting than 
her answer to Campeius and Wolsey, who come 
to visit her as pretended friends. 

■ <c Nay, forsooth, my friends, 

They that my trust must grow to, live not here ; 
They are, as all my comforts are, far hence, 
lii mine own country, lords.'' 



238 HENRY V11I. 

Dr. Johnson observes of this play, that " the 
meek sorrows and virtuous distress of Katherine 
have furnished some scenes, which may be justly 
numbered among the greatest efforts of tragedy. 
But the genius of Shakespear comes in and goes 
out with Katherine. Every other part may be 
easily conceived and easily written/' This is 
easily said ; but with all due deference to so 
great a reputed authority as that of Johnson, it 
is not true. For instance, the scene of Buck- 
ingham led to execution is one of the most af- 
fecting and natural in Shakespear, and one to 
which there is hardly an approach in any other 
author. Again, the character of Wolsey, the 
description of his pride and of his fall, are in- 
imitable, and have, besides their gorgeousness 
of effect, a pathos, which only the genius of 
Shakespear could lend to the distresses of a 
proud, bad man, like "Wolsey. There is a 
sort of child-like simplicity in the very help- 
lessness of his situation, arising from the recol- 
lection of his past overbearing ambition. After 
the cutting sarcasms of his enemies on his dis- 
grace, against which he bears up with a spirit 
conscious of his own superiority, he breaks out 
into that fine apostrophe — 

" FareweL, a long farewell to all my greatness ! 
This is the state of man j to-day he puts forth 
The tender leaves of hope/ to-morrow blossoms, 



HENRY VIII. 239 

And bears his blushing hontnirs thick upon him ; 
The third day, comes a frost, a killing frost ; 
And — when he thinks, good easy man, full surely 
His greatness is a ripening — nips his root, 
And then he falls, as I do. I have ventur'd, 
Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders, 
These many summers in a sea of glory ; 
But far beyond my depth : my high-blown pride 
At length broke under me j and now has left me, 
Weary and old with service, to the mercy 
Of a rude stream, that must for ever hide me. 
Vain pomp and glory of the world, I hate ye ! 
I feel my heart new open'd : O how wretched 
Is that poor man, that hangs on princes' favours ! 
There is betwixt that smile we would aspire to, 
That sweet aspect of princes, and our ruin, 
More pangs and fears than war and women have 5 
And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer, 
Never to hope again !" — 

There is in this passage, as well as in the well- 
known dialogue with Cromwell which follows, 
something which stretches beyond common- 
place; nor is the account which Griffiths gives 
of Wolsey's death less Shakespearian; and the 
candour with which Queen Katherine listens 
to the praise of " him whom of all men while 
living she hated most" adds the last graceful 
finishing to her character. 

Among other images of great individual beau- 
ty might be mentioned the description of the 
effect of Ann Boleyn's presenting herself to the 
crowd at her coronation. 



240 HENRY VIIL 



'' While her grace sat down 



To rest awhile, some half an hour or so, 
In a rich chair of state, opposing freely 
The beauty of her person to the people. 
Believe me, sir, she is the goodliest woman 
That ever lay by man. Which when the people 
Had the full view of, such a noise arose 
As the shrouds make at sea in a stiff tempest, 
As loud and to as many tunes." 

The character of Henry VIIL is drawn with 
great truth and spirit. It is like a very dis- 
agreeable portrait, sketched by the hand of a 
master. His gross appearance, his blustering 
demeanour, his vulgarity, his arrogance, his 
sensuality, his cruelty, his hypocrisy, his want 
of common decency and common humanity, are 
marked in strong lines. His traditional pecu- 
liarities of expression complete the reality of the 
picture. The authoritative expletive, " Ha I" 
with which he intimates his indignation or sur- 
prise, has an effect like the first startling sound 
that breaks from a thunder-cloud. He is of all 
the monarchs in our history the most disgust- 
ing: for he unites in himself all the vices of 
barbarism and refinement, without their virtues. 
Other kings before him (such as Richard III.) 
were tyrants and murderers out of ambition or 
necessity : they gained or established unjust 
power by violent means : they destroyed their 
enemies, or those who barred their access to 



HENRY VIII. 241 

the throne or made its tenure insecure. But 
Henry VIII/s power is most fatal to those whom 
he loves : he is cruel and remorseless to pamper 
his luxurious appetites: bloody and voluptuous; 
an amorous murderer ; an uxorious debauchee. 
His hardened insensibility to the feelings of 
others is strengthened by the most profligate 
self-indulgence. The religious hypocrisy, under 
which he masks his cruelty and his lust, is ad- 
mirably displayed in the speech in which he 
describes the first misgivings of his conscience 
and its increasing throes and terrors, which 
have induced him to divorce his queen. The 
only thing in his favour in this play is his treat- 
ment of Cranmer: there is also another circum- 
stance in his favour, which is his patronage of 
Hans Holbein. — It has been said of Shakespear 
— " No maid could live near such a man." It 
might with as good reason be said — " No king 
could live near such a man." His eye would 
have penetrated through the pomp of circum- 
stance and the veil of opinion. As it is, he has 
represented such persons to the life — his plays 
are in this respect the glass of history — he has 
done them the same justice as if he had been 
a privy counsellor all his life, and in each succes- 
sive reign. Kings ought never to be seen upon 
the stage. In the abstract, they are very disa- 
greeable characters : it is only while living that 
they are " the best of kings." It is their power, 

R 



242 HENRY VIII. 

their splendour, it is the apprehension of the 
personal consequences of their favour or their 
hatred, that dazzles the imagination and sus- 
pends the judgment of their favourites or their 
vassals ; but death cancels the bond of allegi- 
ance and of interest ; and seen as they were, 
their power and their pretensions look mon- 
strous and ridiculous. The charge brought 
against modern philosophy as inimical to loyalty- 
is unjust, because it might as well be brought 
against other things. No reader of history can 
be a lover of kings. We have often wondered 
that Henry VIII. as he is drawn by Shakespear, 
and as we have seen him represented in all the 
bloated deformity of mind and person, is not 
hooted from the English stage. 



KING JOHN. 



King John is the last of the historical plays 
we shall have to speak of; and we are not sorry 
that it is. If we are to indulge our imagina- 
tions, we had rather do it upon an imaginary 
theme ; if we are to find subjects for the exer- 
cise of our pity and terror, we prefer seeking 
them in fictitious danger and fictitious distress. 
It gives a soreness to our feelings of indignation 
or sympathy, when we know that in tracing 
the progress of sufferings and crimes, we are 
treading upon real ground, and recollect that 
the poet's " dream" denoted a foregone conclu- 
sion — irrevocable ills, not conjured up by fancy, 
but placed beyond the reach of poetical jus- 
tice. That the treachery of King John, the 
death of Arthur, the grief of Constance, had a 
real truth in history, sharpens the sense of pain, 
while it hangs a leaden weight on the heart and 



244 KING JOHN. 

the imagination. Something whispers us that 
we have no right to make a mock of calamities 
like these, or to turn the truth of things into 
the puppet and play-thing of our fancies. " To 
consider thus" may be " to consider too curi- 
ously ;" but still we think that the actual truth 
of the particular events, in proportion as we are 
conscious of it, is a drawback on the pleasure 
as well as the dignity of tragedy. 

King John has all the beauties of language 
and all the richness of the imagination to re- 
lieve the painfulness of the subject. The cha- 
racter of King John himself is kept pretty much 
in the back-ground ; it is only marked in by 
comparatively slight indications. The crimes he 
is tempted to commit are such as are thrust upon 
him rather by circumstances and opportunity 
than of his own seeking : he is here represented 
as more cowardly than cruel, and as more con- 
temptible than odious. The play embraces only 
a part of his history. There are however few 
characters on the stage that excite more disgust 
and loathing. He has no intellectual grandeur 
or strength of character to shield him from the 
indignation which his immediate conduct pro- 
vokes : he stands naked and defenceless, in that 
respect, to the worst we can think of him: and 
besides, we are impelled to put the very worst 
construction on his meanness and cruelty by 
the tender picture of the beauty and helplessness 



KING JOHN. 245 

of the object of it, as well as by the frantic 
and heart-rending pleadings of maternal despair. 
We do not forgive him the death of Arthur be- 
cause he had too late revoked his doom and 
tried to prevent it, and perhaps because he has 
himself repented of his black design, our moral 
sense gains courage to hate him the more for it. 
We take him at his word, and think his pur- 
poses must be odious indeed, when he himself 
shrinks back from them. The scene in which 
King John suggests to Hubert the design of 
murdering his nephew is a master-piece of dra- 
matic skill, but it is still inferior, very infe- 
rior to the scene between Hubert and Arthur, 
when the latter learns the orders to put out his 
eyes. If any thing ever was penned, heart- 
piercing, mixing the extremes of terror and pity, 
of that which shocks and that which soothes the 
mind, it is this scene. We will give it entire, 
though perhaps it is tasking the reader's sympa- 
thy too much. 

<( Enter Hubert and Executioner. 

Hubert. Heat me these irons hot, and look you stand 
, Within the arras ; when I strike my foot 
Upon the bosom of the ground, rush forth 
And bind the boy, which you shall find with me, 
Fast to the chair : be heedful : hence, and watch. 

Executioner. I hope your warrant will bear out the deed. 

Hubert. Uncleanly scruples ! fear not you ; look to't. — 
Young lad, come forth ; I have to say with you. 



246 KING JOHN. 

Enter Arthur. 

Arthur. Good morrow, Hubert. 

Hubert. Morrow, little Prince. 

Arthur. As little prince (having so great a title 
To be more prince) as may be. You are sad. 

Hubert. Indeed I have been merrier. 

Arthur. Mercy on me ! 
Methinks no body should be sad but I ; 
Yet I remember when I was in France, 
Young gentlemen would be as sad as night, 
Only for wantonness. By my Christendom, 
So were I out of prison, and kept sheep, 
I should be merry as the day is long. 
And so I would be here, but that I doubt 
My uncle practises more harm to me. 
He is afraid of me, and I of him. 
Is it my fault that I was GeofFery's son ? 
Indeed it is not, and I would to heav'n 
I were your son, so you would love me, Hubert. 

Hubert. If I talk to him, with his innocent prate 
He will awake my mercy, which lies dead 5 
Therefore I will be sudden, and dispatch. [Aside. 

Arthur. Are you sick, Hubert ? you look pale to-day ? 
In sooth, I would you were a little sick, 
That I might sit all night and watch with you. 
Alas, I love you more than you do me. 

Hubert. His words do take possession of my bosom. 
Read here, young Arthur— [Shewing a paper. 

How now, foolish rheum, [Aside. 

Turning dis-piteous torture out of door ! 
1 must be brief, lest resolution drop 
Out at mine eyes in tender womanish tears. — 
Can you not read it ? Is it not fair writ ? 

Arthur. Too fairly, Hubert, for so foul effect. 
Must you with irons burn out both mine eyes ? 



KING JOHN. 247 

Hubert. Young boy, I must. 

Arthur. And will you ? 

Hubert. And I will. 

Hubert. Have you the heart ? When your head did but 
ache, 
I knit my handkerchief about your brows, 
(The best I had, a princess wrought it me) 
And I did never ask it you again ; 
And with my hand at midnight held your head J 
And, like the watchful minutes to the hour, 
Still and anon chear'd up the heavy time, 
Saying, what lack you ? and where lies your grief ? 
Or, what good love may I perform for you ? 
Many a poor man's son would have lain still, 
And ne'er have spoke a loving word to you ; 
But you at your sick service had a prince. 
Nay, you may think my love was crafty love, 
And call it cunning. Do, and if you will : 
If heav'n be pleas' d that you must use me ill, 

Why then you must. Will you put out mine eyes ? 

These eyes, that never did, and never shall, 
So much as frown on you ? 

Hubert. I've sworn to do it 5 
And with hot irons must I burn them out. 

Arthur. Oh if an angel should have come to me^ 
And told me Hubert should put out mine eyes, 
I would not have believ'd a tongue but Hubert's. 

Hubert. Come forth ; do as I bid you. 

[Stamps, and the men enter. 

Arthur. O save me, Hubert, save me ! my eyes are out 
Ev'n with the fierce looks of these bloody men. 

Hubert. Give me the iron, I say, and bind him here. 

Arthur. Alas, what need you be so boist'rous rough ? 
I will not struggle, I will stand stone-still. 



248 KING JOHN. 

For heav'n's sake, Hubert, let me not be bound. 

Nay, hear me, Hubert, drive these men away, 

And I will sit as quiet as a lamb. 

I will not stir, nor wince, nor speak a word, 

Nor look upon the iron angrily : 

Thrust but these men away, and I'll forgive you, 

Whatever torment you do put me to. 

Hubert. Go, stand within ; let me alone with him. 

Executioner. I am best pleas'd to be from such a dee<J. 

[Exit. 

Arthur. Alas, I then have chid away my friend. 
He hath a stern look, but a gentle heart ; 
Let him come back, that his compassion may 
Give life to yours. 

Hubert. Come, boy, prepare yourself. 

Arthur. Is there no remedy ? 

Hubert. None, but to lose your eyes. 

Arthur. O heav'n ! that there were but a moth in yours, 
A grain, a dust, a gnat, a wand'ring hair, 
Any annoyance in that precious sense : 
Then feeling what small things are boist'rous there, 
Your vile intent must needs seem horrible. 

Hubert. Is this your promise ? go to, hold your tongue. 

Arthur. Let me not hold my tongue 5 let me not, Hu- 
bert ; 
Or, Hubert, if you will, cut out my tongue, 
So I may keep mine eyes. O spare mine eyes ! 
Though to no use, but still to look on you. 
Lo, by my troth, the instrument is cold, 
And would not harm me. 

Hubert. I can heat it, boy. 

, Arthur. No, in good sooth, the fire is dead with grief. 
Being create for comfort, to be us'd 
In undeserv'd extremes j see else yourself, 



KING JOHN. 249 

There is no malice in this burning coal j 

The breath of heav'n hath blown its spirit out, 

And strew' d repentant ashes on its head. 

Hubert. But with my breath I can revive it, boy. 

Arthur. All things that you should use to do me wrong, 
Deny their office ; only you do lack 
That mercy which fierce fire and iron extend, 
Creatures of note for mercy-lacking uses. 

Hubert. Well, see to live ; I will not touch thine eyes 
For all the treasure that thine uncle owns : 
Yet I am sworn, and I did purpose, boy, 
With this same very iron to burn them out. 

Arthur. O, now you look like Hubert. All this while 
You were disguised. 

Hubert. Peace : no more. Adieu,. 
Your uncle must not know but you are dead. 
Ill fill these dogged spies with false reports • 
And, pretty child, sleep doubtless and secure, 
That Hubert, for the wealth of all the world, 
Will not offend thee. 

Arthur. O heav'n ! I thank you, Hubert. 

Hubert. Silence, no more ; go closely in with me j 
Much danger do I undergo for thee. [Exeunt.' 1 

His death afterwards, when he throws him- 
self from his prison-walls, excites the utmost 
pity for his innocence and friendless situation, 
and well justifies the exaggerated denunciations 
of Falconbridge to Hubert whom he suspects 
wrongfully of the deed. 

<( There is not yet so ugly a fiend of hell 
As thou shalt be, if thou did'st kill this child. 
— If thou did'st but consent 



250 KING JOHN. 

To this most cruel act, do but despair : 

And if thou want'st a cord, the smallest thread 

That ever spider twisted from her womb 

Will strangle thee ; a rush will be a beam 

To hang thee on : or would'st thou drown thyself, 

Put but a little water in a spoon, 

And it shall be as all the ocean, 

Enough to stifle such a villain up." 

The excess of maternal tenderness, rendered 
desperate by the fickleness of friends and the 
injustice of fortune, and made stronger in will, 
in proportion to the want of all other power, was 
never more finely expressed than in Constance. 
The dignity of her answer to King Philip, when 
she refuses to accompany his messenger, " To 
me and to the state of my great grief, let 
kings assemble," her indignant reproach to Aus- 
tria for deserting her cause, her invocation to 
death, " that love of misery," however fine and 
spirited, all yield to the beauty of the passage, 
where, her passion subsiding into tenderness, 
she addresses the Cardinal in these words : — 

" Oh father Cardinal, I have heard you say 
That we shall see and know our friends in heav'n t 
If that be, I shall see my boy again, 
For since the birth of Cain, the first male child, 
To him that did but yesterday suspire, 
There was not such a gracious creature born. 
But now will canker-sorrow eat my bud, 
And chase the native beauty from his cheek, 
And he will look as hollow as a ghost, 



KING JOHN. 251 

As dim and meagre as an ague's fit, 
And so he'll die; and rising so again, 
When I shall meet him in the court of heav'n, 
I shall not know him; therefore never, never 
Must I behold my pretty Arthur more. 

K. Philip. You are as fond of grief as of your child. 

Constance. Grief fills the room up of my absent child : 
Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me 5 
Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words, 
Remembers me of all his gracious parts ; 
Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form. 
Then have I reason to be fond of grief." 

The contrast between the mild resignation of 
Queen Katherine to her own wrongs, and the 
wild, uncontroulable affliction of Constance for 
the wrongs which she sustains as a mother, 
is no less naturally conceived than it is ably 
sustained throughout these two wonderful cha- 
racters. 

The accompaniment of the comic character 
of the Bastard was well chosen to relieve the 
poignant agony of suffering, and the cold, cow- 
ardly policy of behaviour in the principal cha-, 
racters of this play. Its spirit, invention, volu- 
bility of tongue, and forwardness in action, are 
unbounded. Aliquando sufflaminandus erat, says 
Ben Jonson of Shakespear. But we should be 
sorry if Ben Jonson had been his licenser. We 
prefer the heedless magnanimity of his wit infi- 
nitely to all Jonson's laborious caution. The 
character of the Bastard's comic humour is the 



252 KING JOHN. 

same in essence as that of other comic characters 
in Shakespear ; they always run on with good 
things and are never exhausted ; they are always 
daring and successful. They have words at 
will and a flow of wit, like a flow of animal spi- 
rits. The difference between Falconbridge and 
the others is that he is a soldier, and brings his 
wit to bear upon action, is courageous with his 
sword as well as tongue, and stimulates his gal- 
lantry by his jokes, his enemies feeling the 
sharpness of his blows and the sting of his sar- 
casms at the same time. Among his happiest 
sallies are his descanting on the composition of 
his own person, his invective against " commo- 
dity, tickling commodity," and his expression 
of contempt for the Archduke of Austria, who 
had killed his father, which begins in jest but 
ends in serious earnest. His conduct at the siege 
of Angiers shews that his resources were not con- 
fined to verbal retorts. — The same exposure of 
the policy of courts and camps, of kings, nobles, 
priests, and cardinals, takes place here as in the 
other plays we have gone through, and we shall 
not go into a disgusting repetition. 

This, like the other plays taken from English 
history, is written in a remarkably smooth and 
flowing style, very different from some of the 
tragedies, Macbeth, for instance. The passages 
consist of a series of single lines, not running 
into one another. This peculiarity in the versifi- 



KING JOHN. 253 

cation, which is most common in the three parts 
of Henry VI. has been assigned as a reason why 
those plays were not written by Shakespear. 
But the same structure of verse occurs in his 
other undoubted plays, as in Richard II. and 
in King John. The following are instances : — 

" That daughter there of Spain, the lady Blanch, 
Is near to England ; look upon the years 
Of Lewis the dauphin, and that lovely maid. 
If lusty love should go in quest of beauty, 
Where should he find it fairer than in Blanch ? 
If zealous love should go in search of virtue, 
Where should he find it purer than in Blanch ? 
If love ambitious sought a match of birth, 
Whose veins bound richer blood than lady Blanch ? 
Such as she is, in beauty, virtue, birth, 
Is the young dauphin every way complete : 
If not complete of, say he is not she ; 
And she wants nothing, to name want, 
If want it be not, that she is not he. 
He is the half part of a blessed man, 
Left to be finished by such as she ; 
And she a fair divided excellence, 
Whose fulness of perfection lies in him. 
O, two such silver currents, when they join, 
Do glorify the banks that bound them in : 
And two such shores to two such streams made one, 
Two such controuling bounds, shall you be, kings, 
To these two princes, if you marry* them." 

Another instance, which is certainly very 
happy as an example of the simple enumeration 



254 KING JOHN. 

of a number of particulars, is Salisbury's remon- 
strance against the second crowning of the king. 

<e Therefore to be possessed with double pomp 4 
To guard a title that was rich before j 
To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, 
To throw a perfume on the violet, 
To smooth the ice, to add another hue 
Unto the rainbow, or with taper light 
To seek the beauteous eye of heav'n to garnish ; 
Is wasteful and ridiculous excess." 



TWELFTH NIGHT; OR, WHAT 
YOU WILL. 



This is justly considered as one of the most 
delightful of Shakespear's comedies. It is full 
of sweetness and pleasantry. It is perhaps too 
good-natured for comedy. It has little satire, 
and no spleen. It aims at the ludicrous rather 
than the ridiculous. It makes us laugh at the 
follies of mankind, not despise them, and still 
less bear any ill-will towards them. Shake- 
spear's comic genius resembles thejbee rather in 
its power of extracting sweets from weeds or 
poisons, than in leaving a sting behind it. He 
gives the most amusing exaggeration of the pre- 
vailing foibles of his characters, but in a way 
that they themselves, instead of being offended 
at, would almost join in to humour; he rather 
contrives opportunities for them to shew them- 
selves off in the happiest lights, than renders 



256 TWELFTH NIGHT; OR, 

them contemptible in the perverse construction 
of the wit or malice of others. — There is a cer- 
tain stage of society in which people become 
conscious of their peculiarities and absurdities, 
affect to disguise what they are, and set up pre- 
tensions to what they are not. This gives rise 
to a corresponding style of comedy, the object 
of which is to detect the disguises of self-love, 
and to make reprisals on these preposterous as- 
sumptions of vanity, by marking the contrast 
between the real and the affected character as 
severely as possible, and denying to those, who 
would impose on us for what they are not, even 
the merit which they have. This is the comedy 
of artificial life, of wit and satire, such as we 
see it in Congreve, Wycherley, Vanbrugh, &c. 
To this succeeds a state of society from which 
the same sort of affectation and pretence are 
banished by a greater knowledge of the world 
or by their successful exposure on the stage; 
and which by neutralising the materials of comic 
character, both natural and artificial, leaves no 
comedy at all — but the sentimental. Such is 
our modern comedy. There is a period in the 
progress of manners anterior to both these, in 
which the foibles and follies of individuals are 
of nature's planting, not the growth of art or 
study; in which they are therefore unconscious 
of them themselves, or care not who knows 
them, if they can but have their whim out ; and 



WHAT YOU WILL, 25? 

in which, as there is no attempt at imposition^ 
the spectators rather receive pleasure from hu- 
mouring the inclinations of the persons they 
laugh at, than wish to give them pain by expos- 
ing their absurdity. This may be called the 
comedy of nature, and it is the comedy which 
we generally find in Shakespear. — Whether the 
analysis here given be just or not, the spirit of 
his comedies is evidently quite distinct from 
that of the authors above mentioned, as it is in 
its essence the same with that of Cervantes, and 
also very frequently of Moliere, though he was 
more systematic in his extravagance than Shake- 
spear. Shakespear's comedy is of a pastoral 
and poetical cast. Folly is indigenous to the 
soil, and shoots out with native, happy, un- 
checked luxuriance, Absurdity has every en- 
couragement afforded it; and nonsense has room 
to flourish in. Nothing is stunted by the churl- 
ish, icy hand of indifference or severity. The 
poet runs riot in a conceit, and idolises a quib- 
ble. His whole object is to turn the meanest 
or rudest objects to a pleasurable account. The 
relish which he has of a pun, or of the quaint hu- 
mour of a low character, does not interfere with 
the delight with which he describes a beautiful 
image, or the most refined love. The clown's 
forced jests do not spoil the sweetness of the 
character of Viola ; the same house is big enough 
to hold Malvolio, the Countess, Maria, Sir Toby, 



258 TWELFTH NIGHT; OR, 

and Sir Andrew Ague-cheek. For instance, 
nothing can fall much lower than this last cha- 
racter in intellect or morals: yet how are his 
weaknesses nursed and dandled by Sir Toby 
into something " high fantastical," when on Sir 
Andrew's commendation of himself for dancing 
and fencing, Sir Toby answers — " Wherefore 
are these things hid? Wherefore have these gifts 
a curtain before them ? Are they like to take 
dust like mistress Moll's picture? Why dost 
thou not go to church in a galliard, and come 
home in a coranto? My very walk should be a 
jig! I would not so much as make water but 
in a cinque-pace. What dost thou mean ? Is 
this a world to hide virtues in ? I did think 
by the excellent constitution of thy leg, it was 
framed under the star of a galliard !" — How Sir 
Toby, Sir Andrew, and the Clown afterwards 
chirp over their cups, how they " rouse the 
night-owl in a catch, able to draw three souls out 
of one weaver?" What can be better than Sir 
Toby's unanswerable answer to Malvolio, " Dost 
thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall 
be no more cakes and ale ?" — In a word, the best 
turn is given to every thing, instead of the worst. 
There is a constant infusion of the romantic and 
enthusiastic, in proportion as the characters are 
natural and sincere : whereas, in the more arti- 
ficial style of comedy, every thing gives way to 
ridicule and indifference, there being nothing left 



WHAT YOU WILL, 259 

but affectation on one side, and incredulity on 
the other. — »Much as we like Shakespear's co- 
medies, we cannot agree with Dr. Johnson that 
they are better than his tragedies; nor do we 
like them half so well. If his inclination to 
comedy sometimes led him to trifle with the 
seriousness of tragedy, the poetical and impas- 
sioned passages are the best parts of his come- 
dies. The great and secret charm of Twelfth 
Night is the character of Viola. Much as we 
like catches and cakes and ale, there is some- 
thing that we like better. We have a friend- 
ship for Sir Toby; we patronise Sir Andrew; 
we have an understanding with the Clown, a 
sneaking kindness for Maria and her rogueries; 
we feel a regard for Malvolio, and sympathise 
with his gravity, his smiles, his cross garters, 
his yellow stockings, and imprisonment in the 
stocks. But there is something that excites 
in us a stronger feeling than all this- — it is Viola's 
confession of her love. 

" Duke. What's her history? 

Viola. A blank , my lord, she never told her love : 
She let concealment, like a worm i' th' bud, 
Prey on her damask cheek, she pin'd in thought, 
And with a green and yellow melancholy, 
She sat like Patience on a monument, 
Smiling at grief. Was not this Zore indeed? 
We men may say more, swear more, but indeed, 
Our shews are more than will ; for still we prove 
Much in our vows, but little in our love. 



200 TWELFTH NIGHT ; OR, 

Duke. But died thy sister of her love, my boy? 
Viola. I am all the daughters of my father's house, 
And all the brothers too 5 — and yet I know not." — 

Shakespear alone could describe the effect of 
his own poetry. 

" Oh, it came o'er the ear like the sweet south 
That breathes upon a bank of violets, 
Stealing and giving odour." 

What we so much admire here is not the image 
of Patience on a monument, which has been 
generally quoted, but the lines before and after 
it. " They give a very echo to the seat where 
love is throned/' How long ago it is since we 
first learnt to repeat them; and still, still they 
vibrate on the heart, like the sounds which 
the passing wind draws from the trembling 
strings of a harp left on some desert shore ! 
There are other passages of not less impassioned 
sweetness. Such is Olivia's address to Sebas- 
tian whom she supposes to have already de- 
ceived her in a promise of marriage. 

' ' Blame not this haste of mine : if you mean well, 
Now go with me and with this holy man 
Into the chantry by : there before him, 
And underneath that consecrated roof, 
Plight me the full assurance of your faith, 
That my most jealous and too doubtful soul 
May live at peace." 

We have already said something of Shake- 






I WHAT YOU WILL. 261 

spear's songs. One of the most beautiful of 
them occurs in this play, with a preface of his 
own to it. 

" Duke. O fellow, come ; the song we had last night. 
Mark it, Cesario, it is old and plain ; 
The spinsters and the knitters in the sun, 
And the free maids that weave their thread with bones, 
Do use to chaunt it : it is silly sooth, 
And dallies with the innocence of love, 
Like the old age. 

SONG. 
Come away, come away, death, 
And in sad cypress let me be laid ; 

Fly away, fly away, breath j 
I am slain by a fair cruel maid. 
My shroud of white, stuck all with yew, 

O prepare it -, 
My part of death no one so true 
Did share it. 

Not a flower, not a flower sweet, 
On my black coffin let there be strewn ; 

Not a friend, not a friend greet 
My poor corpse, where my bones shall be thrown : 
A thousand thousand sighs to save, 
Lay me, O ! where 
Sad true-love never find my grave, 
To weep there." 

Who after this will say that Shakespear's ge- 
nius was only fitted for comedy? Yet after 
reading other parts of this play, and particularly 
the garden-scene where Malvolio picks up the 



262 TWELFTH NIGHT; OR, 

letter, if we were to say that his genius for 
comedy was less than his genius for tragedy, it 
would perhaps only prove that our own taste in 
such matters is more saturnine than mercurial. 

" Enter Maria. 

Sir Toby. Here comes the little villain : — How now, my 
nettle of India ? 

Maria. Get ye all three into the box-tree : Malvolio's 
coming down this walk : he has been yonder i' the sun, 
practising behaviour to his own shadow this half hour : ob- 
serve him, for the love of mockery ; for I know this letter 
will make a contemplative idiot of him. Close, in the name 
of jesting! Lie thou there 5 for here come's the trout that 
must be caught with tickling. 

[ They hide themselves. Maria throws down a letter:, and 

[Exit. 
Enter Malvolio. 

Malvolio. 'Tis but fortune; all is fortune. Maria once 
told me, she did affect me ; and I have heard herself come thus 
near, that, should she fancy, it should be one of my com- 
plexion. Besides, she uses me with a more exalted respect 
than any one else that follows her. What should I think 
on't? 

Sir Toby. Here's an over-weening rogue ! 

Fabian. O, peace ! Contemplation makes a rare turkey- 
cock of him ; how he jets under his advanced plumes ! 

Sir Andrew. 'Slight, I could so beat the rogue :~— 

Sir Toby. Peace, I say. 

Malvolio. To be count Malvolio ;~? 

Sir Toby. Ah, rogue! 

Sir Andrew. Pistol him, pistol him, 

Sir Toby. Peace, peace ! 

Malvolio. There is example for't 3 the lady of the Strachy 
married the yeoman of the wardrobe. 



WHAT YOU WILL. 263 

Sir Andrew. Fie on him, Jezebel ! 

Fabian. O, peace ! now he's deeply in j look, how imagi- 
nation blows him. 

Malvolio. Having been three months married to her, 
sitting in my chair of state, 

Sir Toby. O for a stone bow, to hit him in the eye ! 

Malvolio. Calling my officers about me, in my branch'd 
velvet gown ; having come from a day-bed, where I have 
left Olivia sleeping. 

Sir Toby. Fire and brimstone ! 

Fabian. Ot peace, peace! 

Malvolio. And then to have the humour of state: and 

after a demure travel of regard,- telling them, I know 

my place, as I would they should do theirs, — to ask for my 
kinsman Toby. 

Sir Toby. Bolts and shackles ! 

Fabian. O, peace, peace, peace ! now, now. 

Malvolio. Seven of my people, with an obedient start, 
make out for him- I frown the while 5 and, perchance, 
wind up my watch, or play with some rich jewel. Toby 
approaches ; curtsies there to me : 

Sir Toby. Shall this fellow live ? 

Fabian. Though our silence be drawn from us with cares, 
yet peace. 

Malvolio. I extend my hand to him thus, quenching my 
familiar smile with an austere regard of controul : 

Sir Toby. And does not Toby take you a blow o'the lips 
then? 

Malvolio. Saying — Cousin Toby, my fortunes having cast 
me on your niece, give me this prerogative of speech 5 — 

Sir Toby. What, what? 

Malvolio. You must amend your drunkenness. 

Fabian. Nay, patience, or we break the sinews of our plot. 

Malvolio. Besides, you waste the treasure of your time 
with a foolish knight — 



2<54 TWELFTH NIGHT. 

Sir Andrew. That's me, I warrant you. 

Malvolio. One Sir Andrew 

Sir Andrew. I knew, 'twas I j for many do call me fool 
Malvolio. What employment have we here ? 

[Taking up the letter." 

The letter and his comments on it are equally 
good. If poor Malvolio's treatment afterwards 
is a little hard, poetical justice is done in the 
uneasiness which Olivia suffers on account of 
her mistaken attachment to Cesario, as her in- 
sensibility to the violence of the Duke's passion 
is atoned for by the discovery of Viola's con* 
cealed love of him. 



THE 

TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA. 



This is little more than the first outlines of a 
comedy loosely sketched in. It is the story of 
a novel dramatised with very little labour or 
pretension ; yet there are passages of high poe- 
tical spirit, and of inimitable quaintness of hu- 
mour, which are undoubtedly Shakespear's, and 
there is throughout the conduct of the fable, a 
careless grace and felicity which marks it for 
his. One of the editors (we believe, Mr. Pope) 
remarks in a marginal note to the Two Gen- 
tlemen of Verona — " It is observable (I 
know not for what cause) that the style of this 
comedy is less figurative, and more natural and 
unaffected than the greater part of this author's, 
though supposed to be one of the first he wrote." 
Yet so little does the editor appear to have made 
up his mind upon this subject, that we find the 



266 TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA. 

following note to the very next (the second) 
scene. " This whole scene, like many others 
in these plays (some of which I believe were 
written by Shakespear, and others interpolated 
by the players) is composed of the lowest and 
most trifling conceits, to be accounted for only 
by the gross taste of the age he lived in : Po- 
pulo ut placerent. I wish I had authority to 
leave them out, but I have done all I could, set 
a mark of reprobation upon them, throughout 
this edition." It is strange that our fastidious 
critic should fall so soon from praising to repro- 
bating. The style of the familiar parts of this 
comedy is indeed made up of conceits^— low 
they may be for what we know, but then they 
are not poor, but rich ones. The scene of 
Launce with his dog (not that in the second, 
but that in the fourth act) is a perfect treat in 
the way of farcical drollery and invention ; nor 
do we think Speed's manner of proving his mas- 
ter to be in love deficient in wit or sense, though 
the style may be criticised as not simple enough 
for the modern taste. 

' ' Valentine. Why, how know you that I am in love ? 

Speed. Marry, by these special marks : first, yon have 
learned, like Sir Protheus, to wreathe yonr arms like a 
mal-content, to relish a love-song like a robin-red-breast, 
to walk alone like one that had the pestilence, to sigh like 
a school-boy that had lost his ABC, to weep like a young 
wench that had lost her grandam, to fast like one that 



TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA. <267 

takes diet, to watch like one that fears robbing, to speak 
puling like a beggar at Hallowmas. You were wont, when 
you laughed, to crow like a cock j when you walked, to 
walk like one of the lions ; when you fasted, it was pre- 
sently after dinner -, when you looked sadly, it was for want 
of money j and now you are metamorphosed with a mistress, 
that when I look on you, I can hardly think you my mas- 
ter." 

The tender scenes in this play, though not so 
highly wrought as in some others, have often 
much sweetness of sentiment and expression. 
There is something pretty and playful in the 
conversation of Julia with her maid, when she 
shews such a disposition to coquetry about re- 
ceiving the letter from Protheus; and her beha- 
viour afterwards and her disappointment, when 
she finds him faithless to his vows, remind us 
at a distance of Imogen's tender constancy. 
Her answer to Lucetta, who advises her against 
following her lover in disguise, is a beautiful 
piece of poetry. 

" Lucetta. I do not seek to quench your love's hot fire, 
But qualify the fire's extremest rage, 
Lest it should burn above the bounds of reason. 

Julia. The more thou damm'st it up, the more it burns ; 
The current that with gentle murmur glides, 
Thou know'st, being stopp'd, impatiently doth rage ; 
But when his fair course is not hindered, 
He makes sweet music with th' enamell'd stones, 
Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge 
He overtaketh in his pilgrimage s 



268 TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA. 

And so by many winding nooks he strays. 
With willing sport, to the wild ocean.* 
Then let me go, and hinder not my course j 
I'll be as patient as a gentle stream, 
And make a pastime of each weary step, 
Till the last step have brought me to my love 5 
And there I'll rest, as after much turmoil, 
A blessed soul doth in Elysium." 

If Shakespear indeed had written only this 
and other passages in the Two Gentlemen 
of Verona, he would almost have deserved 
Milton's praise of him — 

" And sweetest Shakespear, Fancy's child, 
Warbles his native wood-notes wild." 

But as it is, he deserves rather more praise than 
this. 

* The river wanders at its own sweet will. 

Wordsworth. 



THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. 



This is a play that in spite of the change of 
manners and of prejudices still holds undisputed 
possession of the stage. Shakespear's malig- 
nant has outlived Mr. Cumberland's benevolent 
Jew. In proportion as Shylock has ceased to 
be a popular bugbear, "baited with the rabble's 
curse," he becomes a half-favourite with the 
philosophical part of the audience, who are dis- 
posed to think that Jewish revenge is at least as 
good as Christian injuries. Shylock is a good 
hater ; " a man no less sinned against than sin- 
ning." If he carries his revenge too far, yet he 
has strong grounds for " the lodged hate he 
bears Anthonio," which he explains with equal 
force of eloquence and reason. He seems the 
depositary of the vengeance of his race ; and 
though the long habit of brooding over daily in- 
sults and injuries has crusted over his temper 



270 MERCHANT OF VENICE. 

with inveterate misanthropy, and hardened him 
against the contempt of mankind, this adds 
but little to the triumphant pretensions of his 
enemies. There is a strong, quick, and deep 
sense of justice mixed up with the gall and bit- 
terness of his resentment. The constant appre- 
hension of being burnt alive, plundered, banished, 
reviled, and trampled on, might be supposed to 
sour the most forbearing nature, and to take 
something from that " milk of human kindness," 
with which his persecutors contemplated his in- 
dignities. The desire of revenge is almost inse- 
parable from the sense of wrong; and we can 
hardly help sympathising with the proud spirit, 
hid beneath his " Jewish gaberdine," stung to 
madness by repeated undeserved provocations, 
and labouring to throw off the load of obloquy 
and oppression heaped upon him and all his tribe 
by one desperate act of " lawful" revenge, till 
the ferociousness of the means by which he is 
to execute his purpose, and the pertinacity with 
which he adheres to it, turn us against him, 
but even at last, when disappointed of the san- 
guinary revenge with which he had glutted his 
hopes, and exposed to beggary and contempt 
by the letter of the law on which he had insisted 
with so little remorse, we pity him, and think him 
hardly dealt with by his judges. In all his an- 
swers and retorts upon his adversaries, he has 
the best not only of the argument but of the 



MERCHANT OF VENICE. 271 

question, reasoning on their own principles attd 
practice. They are so far from allowing of any 
measure of equal dealing, of common justice 
or humanity between themselves and the Jew* 
that even when they come to ask a favour of 
him, and Shylock reminds them that " on such 
a day they spit upon him, another spurned him, 
another called him dog, and for these curtesies 
request he'll lend them so much monies" — An- 
thonio, his old enemy, instead of any acknow- 
ledgment of the shrewdness and justice of his 
remonstrance, which would have been preposter- 
ous in a respectable Catholic merchant in those 
times, threatens him with a repetition of the 
same treatment — 

" I am as like to call thee so again, 

To spit on thee again, to spurn thee too." 

After this, the appeal to the Jew's mercy, as 
if there were any common principle of right and 
wrong between them, is the rankest hypocrisy, 
or the blindest prejudice; and the Jew's answer 
to one of Anthonio's friends, who asks him 
what his pound of forfeit flesh is good for, is 
irresistible — 

" To bait fish withal ; if it will feed nothing else, it will 
feed my revenge. He hath disgrac'd me, and hinder'd me 
of half a million, laugh'd at my losses, mock'd at my gains, 
scorn' d my nation, thwarted my bargains, cool'd my friends, 
heated mine enemies ; and what's his reason \ I am a Jew. 



272 MERCHANT OF VENICE. 

Hath not a Jew eyes ; hath not a Jew hands, organs, di- 
mensions, senses, affections, passions ; fed with the same 
food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same 
diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by 
the same winter and summer that a Christian is ? If you 
prick us, do we not bleed ? If you tickle us, do we not 
laugh ? If you poison us, do we not die ? and if you wrong 
us, shall we not revenge ) If we are like you in the rest, 
we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, 
what is his humility? revenge. If a Christian wrong a 
Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example ? 
why revenge. The villainy you teach me I will execute, 
and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction." 

The whole of the trial-scene, both before and 
after the entrance of Portia, is a master-piece 
of dramatic skill. The legal acuteness, the pas- 
sionate declamations, the sound maxims of 
jurisprudence, the wit and irony interspersed in 
it, the fluctuations of hope and fear in the dif- 
ferent persons, and the completeness and sud- 
denness of the catastrophe, cannot be surpassed. 
Shylock, who is his own counsel, defends him- 
self well, and is triumphant on all the general 
topics that are urged against him, and only fails 
through a legal flaw. Take the following as an 
instance : — 

" Shylock. What judgment shall I dread, doing no 
wrong? 
You have among you many a purchas'd slave, 
Which, like your asses, and your dogs, and mules. 
You use in abject and in slavish part, 



MERCHANT OF VENICE. 273 

Because you bought them : — shall I say to you, 

Let them be free, marry them to your heirs ? 

Why sweat they under burdens ? let their beds 

Be made as soft as yours, and let their palates 

Be season'd with such viands ? you will answer, 

The slaves are ours : — so do I answer you : 

The pound of flesh, which I demand of him* > 

Is dearly bought, is mine, and I will have it : 

If you deny me, fie upon your law ! 

There is no force in the decrees of Venice : 

I stand for judgment : answer ; shall I have it ?" 

The keenness of his revenge awakes all his 
faculties ; and he beats back all opposition to 
his purpose, whether grave or gay, whether of 
wit or argument, with an equal degree of earn- 
estness and self-possession. His character is 
displayed as distinctly in other less prominent 
parts of the play, and we may collect from a few 
sentences the history of his life — his descent and 
origin, hi$jhrift and domestic economy, his af- 
fection for his daughter, whom he loves next to 
his wealth, his courtship and his first present to" 
Leah, his wife ! " I would not have parted 
with it" (the ring which he first gave her) " for 
a wilderness of monkies !" What a fine Heb- 
raism is implied in this expression ! 

Portia is not a very great favourite with us; 
neither are we in love with her maid, Nerissa. 
Portia has a certain degree of affectation and 
pedantry about her, which is very unusual in 
Shakespear's women, but which perhaps was a 

T 



274 MERCHANT OF VENICE. 

proper qualification for the office of a " civil 
doctor," which she undertakes and executes so 
successfully. The speech about Mercy is very 
well ; but there are a thousand finer ones in 
Shakespear. We do not admire the scene of 
the caskets ; and object entirely to the Black 
Prince Morocchius. We should like Jessica 
better if she had not deceived and robbed her 
father, and Lorenzo, if he had not married a 
Jewess, though he thinks he has a right to 
wrong a Jew. The dialogue between this 
newly -married couple by moonlight, begin- 
ning " On such a night," &c. is a collection 
of classical elegancies. Launcelot, the Jew's 
man, is an honest fellow. The dilemma in 
which he describes himself placed between his 
" conscience and the fiend," the one of which 
advises him to run away from his master's ser- 
vice and the other to stay in it, is exquisitely 
humourous. 

Gratiano is a very admirable subordinate cha- 
racter. He is the jester of the piece : yet one 
speech of his, in his own defence, contains a 
whole volume of wisdom. 

ee Anthonio. I hold the world but as the world, Gra- 
tiano, 
A stage, where every one must play his part ; 
And mine a sad one. 

Gratiano. Let me play the fool : 
With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come ; 



MERCHANT OF VENICE. 275 

And let my liver rather heat with wine. 

Than my heart cool with mortifying groans. 

Why should a man, whose blood is warm within, 

Sit like his grandsire cut in alabaster ? 

Sleep when he wakes ? and creep into the jaundice 

By being peevish ? I tell thee what, Anthonio — 

I love thee, and it is my love that speaks $ — 

There are a sort of men, whose visages 

Do cream and mantle like a standing pond : 

And do a wilful stillness entertain, 

With purpose to be drest in an opinion 

Of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit 5 

As who should say, I am Sir Oracle, 

And when I ope my lips, let no dog bark ! 

O, my Anthonio, I do know of these, 

That therefore only are reputed wise, 

For saying nothing 5 who, I am very sure, 

If they should speak, would almost damn those ears, 

Which hearing them, would call their brothers, fools. 

I'll tell thee more of this another time : 

But fish not, with this melancholy bait, 

For this fool's gudgeon, this opinion." 

Gratiano's speech on the philosophy of love, 
and the effect of habit in taking off the force of 
passion, is as full of spirit and good sense. The 
graceful winding up of this play in the fifth act, 
after the tragic business is despatched, is one of 
the happiest instances of Shakespear's know- 
ledge of the principles of the drama. We do 
not mean the pretended quarrel between Portia 
and Nerissa and their husbands about the rings, 
which is amusing enough, but the conversation 



tn MERCHANT OF VENICE, 

just before and after the return of Portia to 
her own house, beginning " How sweet the 
moonlight sleeps upon this bank," and ending 
" Peace ! how the moon sleeps with Endymion, 
and would not be awaked." There is a number 
of beautiful thoughts crowded into that short 
space, and linked together by the most natural 
transitions. 

When we first went to see Mr. Kean in Shy- 
lock, we expected to see, what we had been 
used to see, a decrepid old man, bent with age 
and ugly with mental deformity, grinning with 
deadly malice, with the venom of his heart con- 
gealed in the expression of his countenance, 
sullen, morose, gloomy, inflexible, brooding over 
one idea, that of his hatred, and fixed on one 
unalterable purpose, that of his revenge. We 
were disappointed, because we had taken our 
idea from other actors, not from the play. There 
is no proof there that Shylock is old, but a sin- 
gle line, " Bassanio and old Shylock, both stand 
forth," — which does not imply that he is infirm 
with age — and the circumstance that he has a 
daughter marriageable, which does not imply 
that he is old at all. It would be too much to 
say that his body should be made crooked and 
deformed to answer to his mind, which is bowed 
down and warped with prejudices and passion* 
That he has but one idea, is not true ; he ha& 
more ideas than any other person in the piece i 



MERCHANT OF VENICE. 277 

and if he is intense and inveterate in the pur- 
suit of his purpose, he shews the utmost elasti- 
city, vigour, and presence of mind, in the means 
of attaining it. But so rooted was our habitual 
impression of the part from seeing it caricatured 
in the representation, that it was only from a 
careful perusal of the play itself that we saw 
our error. The stage is not in general the best 
place to study our author's characters in. It is 
too often filled with traditional common-place 
conceptions of the part, handed down from sire 
to son, and suited to the taste of the great vulgar 
and the small. — " ^Tis an unweeded garden : 
things rank and gross do merely gender in it !" 
If a man of genius comes once in an age to clear 
away the rubbish, to make it fruitful and whole- 
some, they cry, " *Tis a bad school : it may be 
like nature, it may be like Shakespear, but it is 
not like us." Admirable critics ! — 



THE WINTER'S TALE. 



We wonder that Mr. Pope should have enter- 
tained doubts of the genuineness of this play. 
He was, we suppose, shocked (as a certain cri- 
tic suggests) at the Chorus, Time, leaping over 
sixteen years with his crutch between the third 
and fourth act, and at Antigonus's landing with 
the infant Perdita on the sea-coast of Bohemia. 
These slips or blemishes however do not prove 
it not to be Shakespear's ; for he was as likely to 
fall into them as any body; but we do not know 
any body but himself who could produce the 
beauties. The stuff of which the tragic passion 
is composed, the romantic sweetness, the comic 
humour, are evidently his. Even the crabbed 
and tortuous style of the speeches of Leontes, 
reasoning on his own jealousy, beset with doubts 
and fears, and entangled more and more in the 
thorny labyrinth, bears every mark of Shake- 



THE WINTERS TALE. 279 

spear's peculiar manner of conveying the pain- 
ful struggle of different thoughts and feelings, 
labouring for utterance, and almost strangled in 
the birth. For instance;-— 

" Ha' not you seen, Camillo ? 
(But that's past doubt ; you have, or your eye-glass 
Is thicker than a cuckold's horn) or heard } 
(For to a vision so apparent, rumour 
Cannot be mute) or thought (for cogitation 
Resides not within man that does not think) 
My wife is slippery ; if thou wilt, confess^ 
Or else be impudently negative., 
To have nor eyes, nor ears,, nor thought."-— 

Here Leontes is confounded with his passion, 
and does not know which way to turn himself, 
to give words to the anguish, rage, and appre- 
hension, which tug at his breast. It is only as 
he is worked up into a clearer conviction of his 
wrongs by insisting on the grounds of his un- 
just suspicions to Camillo, who irritates him 
by his opposition, that he bursts out into the 
following vehement strain of bitter indignation: 
yet even here his passion staggers, and is as it 
were oppressed with its own intensity. 

' ' Is whispering nothing ? 
Is leaning cheek to cheek ? is meeting noses ? 
Kissing with inside lip ? stopping the career 
Of laughter with a sigh ? (a note infallible 
Of breaking honesty ! ) horsing foot on foot ? 
Skulking in corners ) wishing clocks more swift ? 



280 THE WINTER'S TALE. 

Hours, minutes ? the noon, midnight ? and all eyes 
Blind with the pin and web, but theirs ; theirs only, 
That would, unseen, be wicked ? is this nothing } 
Why then the world, and all that's in't, is nothing, 
The covering sky is nothing, Bohemia's nothing, 
My wife is nothing !" 

The character of Hermione is as much dis- 
tinguished by its saint-like resignation and pa- 
tient forbearance, as that of Paulina is by her 
zealous and spirited remonstrances against the 
injustice done to the queen, and by her devoted 
attachment to her misfortunes. Hermione's res- 
toration to her husband and her child, after her 
long separation from them, is as affecting in 
itself as it is striking in the representation. Ca- 
millo, and the old shepherd and his son, are 
subordinate but not uninteresting instruments 
in the developement of the plot, and though 
last, not least, comes Autolycus, a very plea- 
sant, thriving rogue ; and (what is the best 
feather in the cap of all knavery) he escapes 
with impunity in the end. 

The Winters Tale is one of the best-act- 
ing of our author's plays. We remember seeing 
it with great pleasure many years ago. It was 
on the night that King took leave of the stage, 
when he and Mrs. Jordan played together in the 
after-piece of the Wedding-day. Nothing could 
go off with more eclat, with more spirit, and 
grandeur of effect. Mrs. Siddons played Her- 



THE WINTER'S TALE. 281 

mione, and in the last scene acted the painted 
statue to the life — with true monumental dig- 
nity and noble passion ; Mr. Kemble, in Leontes, 
worked himself up into a very fine classical 
phrensy ; and Bannister, as Autolycus, roared as 
loud for pity as a sturdy beggar could do who 
felt none of the pain he counterfeited, and was 
sound of wind and limb. We shall never see 
these parts so acted again ; or if we did, it would 
be in vain. Actors grow old, or no longer sur- 
prise us by their novelty. But true poetry, 
like nature, is always young; and we still read 
the courtship of Florizel and Perdita, as we 
welcome the return of spring, with the same 
feelings as ever. 

" Florizel. Thou dearest Perdita., 
With these forc'd thoughts, I pr'ythee, darken not 
The mirth o'the feast: or, I'll be thine, my fair, 
Or not my father's : for I cannot be 
Mine own, nor any thing to any, if 
I be not thine. To this I am most constant, 
Tho' destiny say, No. Be merry, gentle ; 
Strangle such thoughts as these, with any thing 
That you behold the while. Your guests are coming : 
Lift up your countenance ; as it were the day 
Of celebration of that nuptial, which 
We two have sworn shall come. 

Perdita. O lady fortune, 
Stand you auspicious ! 

Enter Shepherd; Clown, Mopsa, Dorcas, Servants; with 
Polixenes, and Camillo, disguised. 

Florizel. See, your guests approach : 



282 THE WINTER'S TALE. 

Address yourself to entertain them sprightly. 
And let's be red with mirth. 

Shepherd. Fie, daughter! when my old wife liv'd, upon 
This day, she was both pantler, butler, cook 5 
Both dame and servant : welcom'd all, serv'd all : 
Would sing her song, and dance her turn : now here 
At upper end o' the table, now i' the middle : 
On his shoulder, and his ; her face o' fire 
With labour ; and the thing she took to quench it 
She would to each one sip. You are retir'd, 
As if you were a feasted one, and not 
The hostess of the meeting. Pray you, bid 
These unknown friends to us welcome 3 for it is 
A way to make us better friends, more known. 
Come, quench your blushes ; and present yourself 
That which you are, mistress o' the feast. Come on, 
And bid us welcome to your sheep-shearing, 
As your good flock shall prosper. 

Perdita. Sir, welcome ! [To Polixenes and Camilla. 

It is my father's will I should take on me 
The hostess -ship o' the day : you're welcome, sir ! 
Give me those flowers there, Dorcas. — Reverend sirs> 
For you there's rosemary and rue ; these keep 
Seeming, and savour, all the winter long : 
Grace and remembrance be unto you both, 
And welcome to our shearing ! 

Polixenes. Shepherdess, 
(A fair one are you) well you fit our ages 
With flowers of winter. 

Perdita. Sir, the year growing ancient, 
Not yet on summer's death, nor on the birth 
Of trembling winter, the fairest flowers o' the season 
Are our carnations, and streak' d gilly-flowers, 
Which some call nature's bastards : of that kind 
Our rustic garden's barren ; and I care not 
To get slips of them. 



THE WINTER'S TALE. 383 

Polixenes. Wherefore, gentle maiden, 
Do you neglect them ? 

Perdita. For I have heard it said 
There is an art, which, in their piedness, shares 
With great creating nature. 

Polixenes. Say, there be : 
Yet nature is made better by no mean, 
But nature makes that mean : so, o'er that art 
Which, you say, adds to nature, is an art 
That nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry 
A gentler scyon to the wildest stock ; 
And make conceive a bark of baser kind 
By bud of nobler race. This is an art 
Which does mend nature, change it rather : but 
The art itself is nature. 

Perdita. So it is. 

Polixenes. Then make your garden rich in gilly-flowers, 
And do not call them bastards. 

Perdita. I'll not put 
The dibble in earth, to set one slip of them j 
No more than, were I painted, I would wish 
This youth should say, 'twere well; and only therefore 
Desire to breed by me. — Here's flowers for you -, 
Hot lavender, mints, savoury, marjoram -, 
The marigold, that goes to bed with the sun. 
And with him rises, weeping : these are flowers 
Of middle summer, and, I think, they are given 
To men of middle age. You are very welcome. 

Camillo. I should leave grazing, were I of your flocks 
And only live by gazing. 

Perdita. Out, alas ! 
You'd be so lean, that blasts of January 
Would blow you through and through. Now my fairest 

friends, 
I would I had some flowers o' the spring, that might 
Become your time of day ; and your's, and your's, 



234 THE WINTER'S TALE. 

That wear upon your virgin branches yet 

Your maiden-heads growing : O Proserpina, 

For the flowers now, that, frighted, thou let'st fall 

From Diss waggon ! daffodils, 

That come before the swallow dares, and take 

The winds of March with beauty : violets dim, 

But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes, 

Or Cytherea's breath -, pale primroses, 

That die unmarried, ere they can behold 

Bright Phoebus in his strength (a malady 

Most incident to maids); bold oxlips, and 

The crown-imperial ; lilies of all kinds, 

The fleur-de-lis being one ! O, these I lack 

To make you garlands of ; and, my sweet friend 

To strow him o'er and o'er. 

Florizel. What, like a corse ? 

Perdita. No, like a bank, for love to lie and play on ; 
Not like a corse ; or if — not to be buried, 
But quick, and in mine arms. Come, take your flowers j 
Methinks, I play as I have seen them do 
In Whitsun pastorals : sure this robe of mine 
Does change my disposition. 

Florizel. What you do, 
Still betters what is done. When you speak, sweet, 
I'd have you do it ever : when you sing, 
Td have you buy and sell so -, so, give alms ; 
Pray, so ; and for the ordering your affairs, 
To sing them too. When you do dance, I wish you 
A wave o' the sea, that you might ever do 
Nothing but that : move still, still so, 
And own no other function. Each your doing, 
So singular in each particular, 
Crowns what you're doing in the present deeds, 
That all your acts are queens. 

Perdita. O Doricles, 
Your praises are too large; but that your youth 



THE WINTER'S TALE. 285 

And the true blood, which peeps forth fairly through it, 
Do plainly give you out an unstained shepherd ; 
With wisdom I might fear, my Dorieles, 
You wood me the false way. 

Florizel. I think you have 
As little skill to fear, as I have purpose 
To put you to't. But come, our dance, I pray ; 
Your hand, my Perdita : so turtles pair, 
That never mean to part. 

Perdita. I'll swear for 'em. 

Polixenes. This is the prettiest low-born lass that ever 
Ran on the green-sward ; nothing she does, or seems, 
But smacks of something greater than herself, 
Too noble for this place. 

Camillo. He tells her something 
That makes her blood look out : good sooth she is 
The queen of curds and cream." 

This delicious scene is interrupted by the father 
of the prince discovering himself to Florizel, and 
haughtily breaking off the intended match be- 
tween his son and Perdita. When Polixenes 
goes out, Perdita says, 

' c Even here undone : 
I was not much afraid ; for once or twice 
I was about to speak ; and tell him plainly, 
The self-same sun that shines upon his court, 
Hides not his visage from our cottage, but 
Looks on't alike. Wilt please you, sir, be gone ? 

[To Florizel. 
I told you what would come of this. Beseech you, 
Of your own state take care : this dream of mine, 
Being now awake, I'll queen it no inch farther, 
But milk my ewes and weep." 



286 THE WINTER'S TALE. 

As Perdita, the supposed shepherdess, turns out 
to be the daughter of Hermione, and a princess 
in disguise, both feelings of the pride of birth 
and the claims of nature are satisfied by the 
fortunate event of the story, and the fine ro- 
mance of poetry is reconciled to the strictest 
court-etiquette. 



ALUS WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 



All's well that ends well is one of the 
most pleasing of our author's comedies. The 
interest is however more of a serious than of a 
comic nature. The character of Helen is one 
of great sweetness and delicacy. She is placed 
in circumstances of the most critical kind, and 
has to court her husband both as a virgin and 
a wife: yet the most scrupulous nicety of fe- 
male modesty is not once violated. There is 
not one thought or action that ought to bring 
a blush into her cheeks, or that for a moment 
lessens her in our esteem. Perhaps the roman- 
tic attachment of a beautiful and virtuous girl 
to one placed above her hopes by the circum- 
stances of birth and fortune, was never so ex- 
quisitely expressed as in the reflections which 
she utters when young Roussillon leaves his 
mother's house, under whose protection she has 



288 ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 

been brought up wifch him, to repair to the 
French king's court. 

(i Helena. Oh, were that all — I think not on my father, 
And these great tears grace his remembrance more 
Than those I shed for him. What was he like ? 
I have forgot him. My imagination 
Carries no favour in it, but my Bertram's. * 

I am undone, there is no living, none, 
If Bertram be away. It were all one 
That I should love a bright particular star, 
And think to wed it ; he is so above me : 
In his bright radiance and collateral light 
Must I be comforted, not in his sphere. 
Th' ambition in my love thus plagues itself 5 
The hind that would be mated by the lion, 
Must die for love. 'Twas pretty, tho' a plague, 
To see him every hour, to sit and draw 
His arched brows, his hawking eye, his curls 
In our heart's table : heart too capable 
Of every line and trick of his sweet favour. 
But now he's gone, and my idolatrous fancy 
Must sanctify his relics." 

The interest excited by this beautiful picture 
of a fond and innocent heart is kept up after- 
wards by her resolution to follow him to France, 
the success of her experiment in restoring the 
king's health, her demanding Bertram in mar- 
riage as a recompense, his leaving her in disdain, 
her interview with him afterwards disguised as 
Diana, a young lady whom he importunes with 
his secret addresses, and their final reconciliation 



ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 289 

when the consequences of her stratagem and the 
proofs of her love are fully made known. The 
persevering gratitude of the French king to his 
benefactress, who cures him of a languishing dis- 
temper by a prescription hereditary in her family, 
the indulgent kindness of the Countess, whose 
pride of birth yields, almost without a struggle, 
to her affection for Helen, the honesty and up- 
rightness of the good old lord Lafeu, make very 
interesting parts of the picture. The wilful 
stubbornness and youthful petulance pf Bertram 
are also very admirably described. The comic 
part of the play turns on the folly, boasting, 
and cowardice of Parolles, a parasite and hang- 
er-on of Bertram's, the detection of whose 
false pretensions to bravery and honour forms a 
very amusing episode. He is first found out 
by the old lord Lafeu, who says, " The soul 
of this man is in his clothes;" and it is proved 
afterwards that his heart is in his tongue, and 
that both are false ano) hollow. The adventure 
of " the bringing off of his drum" has become 
proverbial as a satire on all ridiculous and blus- 
tering undertakings which the person never 
means to perform: nor can any thing be more 
severe than what one of the bye-standers re- 
marks upon what Parolles says of himself, " Is 
it ppssible he should know what he is, and be 
that he is ?" Yet Parolles himself gives the 
best solution of the difficulty afterwards when 

u 



290 ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 

he is thankful to escape with his life and the 
loss of character ; for, so that he can live on, he 
is by no means squeamish about the loss of pre- 
tensions, to which he had sense enough to know 
he had no real claim, and which he had assumed 
only as a means to live. 

te Parolles. Yet I am thankful : if my heart were great, 
'Twould burst at this. Captain, I'll be no more, 
But I will eat and drink, and sleep as soft 
As captain shall. Simply the thing I am 
Shall make me live : who knows himself a braggart, 
Let him fear this ; for it shall come to pass, 
That every braggart shall be found an ass. 
Rust sword, cool blushes, and Parolles live 
Safest in shame ; being fool'd, by fool'ry thrive 3 
There's place and means for every man alive. 
I'll after them. 

The story of Ali/s Well that ends Well, 
and of several others of Shakespear's plays, is 
taken from Boccacio. The poet has dramatised 
the original novel with great skill and comic 
spirit, and has preserved all the beauty of cha- 
racter and sentiment without improving upon it, 
which was impossible. There is indeed in Boc- 
cacio's serious pieces a truth, a pathos, and an 
exquisite refinement of sentiment, which is 
hardly to be met with in any other prose writer 
whatever. Justice has not been done him by 
the world. He has in general passed for a mere 
narrator of lascivious tales or idle jests. This 



ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. -201 

character probably originated in his obnoxious 
attacks on the monks, and has been kept up by 
the grossness of mankind, who revenged their 
own want of refinement on Boccacio, and only 
saw in his writings what suited the coarseness 
of their own tastes. But the truth is, that he 
has carried sentiment of every kind to its very 
highest purity and perfection. By sentiment 
we would here understand the habitual work- 
ings of some one powerful feeling, where the 
heart reposes almost entirely upon itself, with- 
out the violent excitement of opposing duties or 
untoward circumstances. In this way, nothing 
ever came up to the story of Frederigo Alberigi 
and his Falcon. The perseverance in attach- 
ment, the spirit of gallantry and generosity dis- 
played in it, has no parallel in the history of 
heroical sacrifices. The feeling is so unconscious 
too, and involuntary, is brought out in such 
small, unlooked-for, and unostentatious circum- 
stances, as to show it to have been woven into 
the very nature and soul of the author. The 
story of Isabella is scarcely less fine, and is more 
affecting in the circumstances and in the catas- 
trophe. Dry den has done justice to the impas- 
sioned eloquence of theTancredandSigismunda; 
but has not given an adequate idea of the wild 
preternatural interest of the story of Honoria. 
Cimon and Iphigene is by no means one of the 
best, notwithstanding the popularity of the sub- 



292 ALLS WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 

ject. The proof of unalterable affection given in 
the story of Jeronymo, and the simple touches 
of nature and picturesque beauty in the story of 
the two holiday lovers, who were poisoned by 
tasting of a leaf in the garden at Florence, are 
perfect master-pieces. The epithet of Divine 
was well bestowed on this great painter of the 
human heart. The invention implied in his 
different tales is immense: but we are not to 
infer that it is all his own. He probably availed 
himself of all the common traditions which were 
floating in his time, and which he was the first 
to appropriate. Homer appears the most origi- 
nal of all authors — probably for no other reason 
than that we can trace the plagiarism no farther. 
Boccacio has furnished subjects to numberless 
writers since his time, both dramatic and narra^ 
tive. The story of Griselda is borrowed from 
his Decameron by Chaucer ; as is the Knight's 
Tale (Palamon and Arcite) from his poem of 
the Theseid. 



LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST. 



If we were to part with any oT the author's 
comedies* it should be this. Yet we should 
be loth to part with Don Adriano de Armado, 
that mighty potentate of nonsense, or his page, 
that handful of wit; with Nathaniel the curate, 
or Holofernes the school-master, and their dis- 
pute after dinner on " the golden cadences of 
poesy;" with Costard the clown, or Dull the 
constable. Biron is too accomplished a charac- 
ter to be lost to the world* and yet he could 
not appear without his fellow courtiers and the 
king: and if we were to leave out the ladies, 
the gentlemen would have no mistresses. So 
that we believe we may let the whole play stand 
as it is, and we shall hardly venture to " set a 
mark of reprobation on it." Still we have some 
objections to the style, which we think savours 
more of the pedantic spirit of Shakespear's time 



294 LOVES LABOURS LOST. 

than of his own genius; more of controversial di- 
vinity, and the logic of Peter Lombard, than of the 
inspiration of the Muse. It transports us quite as 
much to the manners of the court, and the quirks 
of courts of law, as to the scenes of nature or the 
fairy-laud of his own imagination. Shakespear 
has set himself to imitate the tone of polite con- 
versation then prevailing among the fair, the 
witty, and the learned, and he has imitated it 
but too faithfully. It is as if the hand of Titian 
had been employed to give grace to the curls of a 
full-bottomed periwig, or Raphael had attempted 
to give expression to the tapestry figures in the 
House of Lords. Shakespear has put an excel- 
lent description of this fashionable jargon into 
the mouth of the critical Holofernes " as too 
picked, too spruce, too affected, too odd, as it 
were, too peregrinate, as I may call it ;" and 
nothing can be more marked than the difference 
when he breaks loose from the trammels he 
had imposed on himself, " as light as bird from 
brake," and speaks in his own person. We 
think, for instance, that in the following soliloquy 
the poet has fairly got the start of Queen Eliza- 
beth and her maids of honour: — 

' ' Biron. O I and I forsooth in love, 
I that have been love's whip ; 
A very beadle to an amorous sigh : 
A critic ; nay, a night-watch constable., 
A domineering pedant o'er the boy. 



LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST 295 

Than whom no mortal more magnificent. 

This whimpled, whining, purblind, wayward boy, 

This signior Junio, giant dwarf, Dan Cupid, 

Regent of love-rhimes, lord of folded arms, 

Th' anointed sovereign of sighs and groans : 

Liege of all loiterers and malecontents, 

Dread prince of plackets, king of codpieces, 

Sole imperator, and great general 

Of trotting parators (O my little heart!) 

And I to be a corporal of his field, 

And wear his colours like a tumbler's hoop ! 

What ? I love ! I sue ! f seek a wife ! 

A woman, that is like a German clock, 

Still a repairing ; ever out of frame ; 

And never going aright, being a watch, 

And being watch'd, that it may still go right 2 

Nay, to be perjur'd, which is worst of all : 

And among three to love the worst of all, 

A whitely wanton with a velvet brow, 

With two pitch balls stuck in her face for eyes ; 

Ay, and by heav'n, one that will do the deed., 

Though Argus were her eunuch and her guard - 3 

And I to sigh for her ! to watch for her ! 

To pray for her ! Go to ; it is a plague 

That Cupid will impose for my neglect 

Of his almighty dreadful little might. 

Well, I will love, write, sigh, pray, sue, and groan : 

Some men must love my lady, and some Joan." 

The character of Biron drawn by Rosaline and 
that which Biron gives of Boyet are equally 
happy. The observations on the use and abuse 
of study, and on the power of beauty to quicken 
the understanding as well as the senses, are ex- 



296 LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST. 

cellent. The scene which has the greatest dra- 
matic effect is that in which Biron, the king, 
Longaville, and Dumain, successively detect 
each other and are detected in their breach of 
their vow and in their profession of attachment 
to their several mistresses, in which they suppose 
themselves to be overheard by no one. The 
reconciliation between these lovers and their 
sweethearts is also very good, and the penance 
which Rosaline imposes on Biron, before he can 
expect to gain her consent to marry him, full of 
propriety and beauty. 

{< Rosaline. Oft have I heard of you, my lord Biron, 
Before I saw you : and the world's large tongue 
Proclaims you for a man replete with mocks j 
Full of comparisons, and wounding flouts ; 
Which you on all estates will execute, 
That lie within the mercy of your wit. 
To weed this wormwood from your faithful brain 3 
And therewithal to win me, if you please, 
(Without the which I am not to be won) 
You shall this twelvemonth term from day to day 
Visit the speechless sick, and still converse 
With groaning wretches j and your task shall be, 
With all the fierce endeavour of your wit, 
T' enforce the pained impotent to smile, 

Biron. To move wild laughter in the throat of death ? 
It cannot be : it is impossible : 
Mirth cannot move a soul in agony. 

Rosaline. Why, that's the way to choke a gibing spirit, 
Whose influence is begot of that loose grace, 
Which shallow laughing hearers give to fools : 



LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST. 297 

A jest's prosperity lies in the ear 

Of him that hears it ; never in the tongue 

Of him that makes it : then, if sickly ears, 

Deaf 'd with the clamours of their own dear groans, 

Will hear your idle scorns, continue then, 

And I will have you, and that fault withal \ 

But, if they will not, throw away that spirit* 

And I shall find you empty of that fault, 

Right joyful of your reformation. 

Biron. A twelvemonth ? Well, befall what will befall; 
I'll jest a twelvemonth in an hospital." 

The famous cuckoo-song closes the play: but 
we shall add no more criticisms : " the words 
of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo." 



MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 



X his admirable comedy used to be frequently 
acted till of late years. Mr. Garrick's Bene- 
dick was one of his most celebrated characters ; 
and Mrs. Jordan, we have understood, played 
Beatrice very delightfully. The serious part is 
still the most prominent here, as in other in- 
stances that we have noticed. Hero is the prin- 
cipal figure in the piece, and leaves an indelible 
impression on the mind by her beauty, her ten- 
derness, and the hard trial of her love. The 
passage in which Claudio first makes a confes- 
sion of his affection towards her conveys as 
pleasing an image of the entrance of love into a 
youthful bosom as can well be imagined. 

« Oh, my lord, 
When you went onward with this ended action, 
I look'd upon her with a soldier's eye, 
That lik'd, but had a rougher task in hand 



MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 299 

Than to drive liking to the name of love ; 
But now I am return'd, and that war-thoughts 
Have left their places vacant 3 in their rooms 
Come thronging soft and delicate desires, 
All prompting me how fair young Hero is, 
Saying, I lik'd her ere I went to wars." 

In the scene at the altar, when Claudio, urged 
on by the villain Don John, brings the charge 
of incontinence against her, and as it were di- 
vorces her in the very marriage-ceremony, her 
appeals to her own conscious innocence and ho- 
nour are made with the most affecting simplicity. 

<c Claudio. No, Leonato, 
I never tempted her with word too large, 
But, as a brother to his sister, shew'd 
Bashful sincerity, and comely love. 

Hero. And seem'd I ever otherwise to you? 

Claudio. Out on thy seeming, I will write against it : 
You seem to me as Dian in her orb, 
As chaste as is the bud ere it be blown j 
But you are more intemperate in your blood 
Than Venus, or those pamper'd animals 
That rage in savage sensuality. 

Hero. Is my lord well, that he doth speak so wide ? 

Leonato. Are these things spoken, or do I but dream ? 

John. Sir, they are spoken, and these things are true. 

Benedick. This looks not like a nuptial. 

Hero. True! O God!"— 

The justification of Hero in the end, and her 
restoration to the confidence and arms of her 



300 MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHINGS 

lover, is brought about by one of those tempo- 
rary consignments to the grave of which Shake- 
spear seems to have been fond. He has perhaps 
explained the theory of this predilection in the 
following lines: — 

f< Friar. She dying, as it must be so maintain' d, 
Upon the instant that she was accus'd, 
Shall be lamented, pity'd, and excus'd, 
Of every hearer : for it so falls out, 
That what we have we prize not to the worth, 
While we enjoy it ; but being lack'd and lost> 
Why then we rack the value ; then we find 
The virtue, that possession would not shew us 
Whilst it was ours. — So will it fare with Claudio : 
When he shall hear she dy'd upon his words, 
The idea of her love shall sweetly creep 
Into his study of imagination j 
And every lovely organ of her life 
Shall come apparel'd in more precious habit, 
More moving, delicate, and full of life, 
Into the eye and prospect of his soul, 
Than when she liv'd indeed." 

The principal comic characters in Much ado 
about Nothing, Benedick and Beatrice, are 
both essences in their kind. His character as 
a woman-hater is admirably supported, and his 
conversion to matrimony is no less happily ef- 
fected by the pretended story of Beatrice's love 
for him. It is hard to say which of the two 
scenes is the best, that of the trick which is thus 



MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 301 

practised on Benedick, or that in which Bea- 
trice is prevailed on to take pity on him by over- 
hearing her cousin and her maid declare (which 
they do on purpose) that he is dying of love for 
her. There is something delightfully picturesque 
in the manner in which Beatrice is described as 
coming to hear the plot which is contrived 
against herself — 

" For look where Beatrice, like a lapwing, runs 
Close by the ground, to hear our conference." 

In consequence of what she hears (not a word 
of which is true) she exclaims when these good- 
natured informants are gone, 

<e What fire is in mine ears ? Can this be true ? 

Stand I condemn'd for pride and scorn so much ? 
Contempt, farewel ! and maiden pride adieu ! 

No glory lives behind the back of such. 
And, Benedick, love on, I will requite thee ', 

Taming my wild heart to thy loving hand 5 
If thou dost love, my kindness shall incite thee 

To bind our loves up in an holy band : 
For others say thou dost deserve ; and I 
Believe it better than reportingly." 

And Benedick, on his part, is equally sincere in 
his repentance with equal reason, after he has 
heard the grey-beard, Leonato, and his friend, 
" Monsieur Love," discourse of the desperate 
state of his supposed inamorata. 



303 MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 

" This can be no trick j the conference was sadly borne. 
— They have the truth of this from Hero. They seem to 
pity the lady; it seems her affections have the full bent. 
Love me ! why, it must be requited. I hear how I am 
censur'd : they say, I will bear myself proudly, if I perceive 
the love come from her j they say too, that she will rather 
die than give any sign of affection. — I did never think to 
marry : I must not seem proud : — happy are they that hear 
their detractions, and can put them to mending. They say, 
the lady is fair ; 'tis a truth, I can bear them witness : and 
virtuous -, — 'tis so, I cannot reprove it : and wise — but for 
loving me : — by my troth it is no addition to her wit 5 — 
nor no great argument of her folly, for I will be horribly in 
love with her. — I may chance to have some odd quirks and 
remnants of wit broken on me, because I have rail'd so 
long against marriage : but doth not the appetite alter ? 
A man loves the meat in his youth, that he cannot endure 
in his age. — Shall quips, and sentences, and these paper 
bullets of the brain, awe a man from the. career of his hu- 
mour ? No : the world must be peopled. When I said, I 
would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I 
were marry'd. — Here comes Beatrice : by this day, she's a 
fair lady : I do spy some marks of love in her." 

The beauty of all this arises from the charac- 
ters of the persons so entrapped. Benedick is 
a professed and staunch enemy to marriage, and 
gives very plausible reasons for the faith that is 
in him. And as to Beatrice, she persecutes him 
all day with her jests (so that he could hardly 
think of being troubled with them at night) she 
not only turns him but all other things into jest, 
and is proof against every thing serious. 



MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 303 

f Hero. Disdain and scorn ride sparkling in her eyes, 
Misprising what they look on ; and her wit 
Values itself so highly, that to her 
All matter else seems weak : she cannot love. 
Nor take no shape nor project of affection, 
She is so self- endeared. 

Ursula. Sure, I think so ; 
And therefore, certainly, it were not good 
She knew his love, lest she make sport at it. 

Hero. Why, you speak truth : I never yet saw man, 
How wise, how noble, young, how rarely featur'd, 
But she would spell him backward : if fair-fac'd, 
She'd swear the gentleman should be her sister^ 
If black, why, nature, drawing of an antick, 
Made a foul blot : if tall, a lance ill- headed 5 
If low, an agate very vilely cut : 
If speaking, why, a vane blown with all winds 3 
If silent, why, a block moved with none. 
So turns she every man the wrong side out 5 
And never gives to truth and virtue that 
Which simpleness and merit purchaseth." 

These were happy materials for Shakespear to 
work on, and he has made a happy use of them. 
Perhaps that middle point of comedy was never 
more nicely hit in which the ludicrous blends 
with the tender, and our follies, turning round 
against themselves in support of our affections, 
retain nothing but their humanity. 

Dogberry and Verges in this play are inimita- 
ble specimens of quaint blundering and mispri- 
sions of meaning ; and are a standing record of 



304 |tIUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 

that formal gravity of pretension and total want 
of common understanding, which Shakespear no 
doubt copied from real life, and which in the 
course of two hundred years appear to have as- 
cended from the lowest to the highest offices in 
the state. 



AS YOU LIKE IT. 



Shakespear has here converted the forest of 
Arden into another Arcadia, where they " fleet 
the time carelessly, as they did in the golden 
world." It is the most ideal of any of this au- 
thor's plays. It is a pastoral drama in which 
the interest arises more out of the sentiments 
and characters than out of the actions or situa- 
tions. It is not what is done, but what is said, 
that claims our attention. Nursed in solitude, 
" under the shade of melancholy boughs," the 
imagination grows soft and delicate, and the 
wit runs riot in idleness, like a spoiled child, 
that is never sent to school. Caprice and fancy 
reign and revel here, and stern necessity is ba- 
nished to the court. The mild sentiments of 
humanity are strengthened with thought and 
leisure ; the echo of the cares and noise of the 
world strikes upon the ear of those " who have 



306 AS YOU LIKE IT. 

felt them knowingly," softened by time and dis- 
tance. " They hear the tumult, and are still." 
The very air of the place seems to breathe 
a spirit of philosophical poetry ; to stir the 
thoughts, to touch the heart with pity, as the 
drowsy forest rustles to the sighing gale. Never 
was there such beautiful moralising, equally free 
from pedantry or petulance. 

" And this their life, exempt from public haunts, 
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, 
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing." 

Jaques is the only purely contemplative cha- 
racter in Shakespear. He thinks, and does no- 
thing. His whole occupation is to amuse his 
mind, and he is totally regardless of his body and 
his fortunes. He is the prince of philosophical 
idlers ; his only passion is thought ; he sets no 
value upon any thing but as it serves as food 
for reflection. He can " suck melancholy out 
of a song, as a weasel sucks eggs ;" the motley 
fool, " who morals on the time," is the greatest 
prize he meets with in the forest* He resents 
Orlando's passion for Rosalind as some dispa- 
ragement of his own passion for abstract truth ; 
and leaves the Duke, as soon as he is restored to 
his sovereignty, to seek his brother out who has 
quitted it, and turned hermit. 

— ' ' Out of these convertites 
There is much matter to be heard and learnt.'* 



AS YOU LIKE IT. 307 

Within the sequestered and romantic glades 
of the forest of Arden, they find leisure to be 
good and wise, or to play the fool and fall in 
love; Rosalind's character is made up of sport- 
ive gaiety and natural tenderness : her tongue 
runs the faster to conceal the pressure at her 
heart. She talks herself out of breath, only to 
get deeper in love. The coquetry with which 
she plays with her lover in the double character 
which she has to support is managed with the 
nicest address. How full of voluble, laughing 
grace is all her conversation with Orlando — 

— " In heedless mazes running 
With wanton haste and giddy cunning.'* 

How full of real fondness and pretended cru- 
elty is her answer to him when he promises to 
love her " For ever and a day !" 

" Say a day without the ever : no, no, Orlando, men are 
April when they woo, December when they wed : maids 
are May when they are maids, but the sky changes when 
they are wives : I will be more jealous of thee than a Bar- 
bary cock-pigeon over his hen ; more clamorous than a par- 
rot against rain 5 more new-fangled than an ape j more 
giddy in my desires than a monkey ; I will weep for nothing 
like Diana in the fountain, and I will do that when you are 
disposed to be merry ; I will laugh like a hyen, and that 
when you are inclined to sleep. 

Orlando. But will my Rosalind do so ? 

Rosalind. By my life she will do as I do." 



308 AS YOU LIKE IT. 

The silent and retired character of Celia is a 
necessary relief to the provoking loquacity of 
Rosalind, nor can any thing be better conceived 
or more beautifully described than the mutual 
affection between the two cousins. 

— " We still have slept together, 
Rose at an instant, learn' d, play'd, eat together, 
And wheresoe'er we went, like Juno's swans, 
Still we went coupled and inseparable." 

The unrequited love of Silvius for Phebe 
shews the perversity of this passion in the com- 
monest scenes of life, and the rubs and stops 
which nature throws in its way, where fortune 
has placed none. Touchstone is not in love, but 
he will have a mistress as a subject for the exer- 
cise of his grotesque humour, and to shew his 
contempt for the passion, by his indifference 
about the person. He is a rare fellow. He is 
a mixture of the ancient cynic philosopher with 
the modern buffoon, and turns folly into wit, and 
wit into folly, just as the fit takes him. His 
courtship of Audrey not only throws a degree 
of ridicule on the state of wedlock itself, but 
he is equally an enemy to the prejudices of 
opinion in other respects. The lofty tone of 
enthusiasm, which the Duke and his com- 
panions in exile spread over the stillness and 
solitude of a country life, receives a pleasant 



AS YOU LIKE IT. 309 

shock from Touchstone's sceptical determination 
of the question. 

" Corin. And how like you this shepherd's life, Mr. Touch- 
stone ? 

Clown. Truly, shepherd, in respect of itself, it is a good 
life ; but in respect that it is a shepherd's life, it is naught. 
In respect that it is solitary, I like it very well j but in re- 
spect that it is private, it is a very vile life. Now in respect 
it is in the fields, it pleaseth me well ; but in respect it is 
not in the court, it is tedious. As it is a spare life, look 
you, it fits my humour ; but as there is no more plenty in 
it, it goes much against my stomach." 

Zimmerman's celebrated work on Solitude dis- 
covers only half the sense of this passage. 

There is hardly any of Shakespear's plays that 
contains a greater number of passages that have 
been quoted in books of extracts, or a greater 
number of phrases that have become in a manner 
proverbial. If we were to give all the striking 
passages, we should give half the play. We 
will only recall a few of the most delightful to 
the reader's recollection. Such are the meeting 
between Orlando and Adam, the exquisite ap- 
peal of Orlando to the humanity of the Duke 
and his company to supply him with food for 
the old man, and their answer, the Duke's de- 
scription of a country life, and the account of 
Jaques moralising on the wounded deer, his 
meeting with Touchstone in the forest, his apo- 



310 AS YOU LIKE IT. 

logy for his own melancholy and his satirical 
vein, and the well-known speech on the stages 
of human life, the old song of " Blow, blow, 
thou winter's wind," Rosalind's description of 
the marks of a lover and of the progress of time 
with different persons, the picture of the snake 
wreathed round Oliver's neck while the lioness 
watches her sleeping prey, and Touchstone's 
lecture to the shepherd, his defence of cuckolds, 
and panegyric on the virtues of " an If." — All 
of these are familiar to the reader : there is one 
passage of equal delicacy and beauty which may 
have escaped him, and with it we shall close 
our account of As you like it. It is Phebe's 
description of Gammed at the end of the third 
act. 

■ f Think not I love him, tho' I ask for him 5 
Tis but a peevish boy, yet he talks well j — 
But what care I for words ! yet words do well, 
When he that speaks them pleases those that hear : 
It is a pretty youth ; not very pretty ; 
But sure he's proud, and yet his pride becomes him j 
He'll make a proper man 3 the best thing in him 
Is his complexion j and faster than his tongue 
Bid make offence, his eye did heal it up : 
He is not very tall, yet for his years he's tall j 
His leg is but so so, and yet 'tis well 5 
There was a pretty redness in his lip, 
A little riper, and more lusty red 
Than that mix'd in his cheek 5 'twas just the difference 



AS YOU LIKE IT. 311 

Betwixt the constant red and mingled damask. 

There be some women, Silvius, had they mark'd him 

In parcels as I did, would have gone near 

To fall in love with him : but for my part 

I love him not, nor hate him not ; and yet 

I have more cause to hate him than to love him 5 

For what had he to do to chide at me ?" 



THE TAMING OF THE SHREW, 



JLhe Taming of the Shrew is almost the 
©nly one of Shakespear's comedies that has a re- 
gular plot, and downright moral. It is full of bus- 
tle, animation, and rapidity of action. It shews 
admirably how self-will is only to be got the 
better of by stronger will, and how one degree 
of ridiculous perversity is only to be driven out 
by another still greater. Petruchio is a madman 
in his senses; a very honest fellow, who hardly 
speaks a word of truth, and succeeds in all his 
tricks and impostures. He acts his assumed 
character to the life, with the most fantastical 
extravagance, with complete presence of mind, 
with untired animal spirits, and without a par- 
ticle of ill-humour from beginning to end. — The 
situation of poor Katherine, worn out by his in- 
cessant persecutions, becomes at last almost as 
pitiable as it is ludicrous, and it is difficult 



THE TAMING OF THE SHREW. 313 

to say which to admire most, the unaccounta- 
bleness of his actions, or the unalterableness of 
his resolutions. It is a character which most 
husbands ought to study, unless perhaps the 
very audacity of Petruchio's attempt might alarm 
them more than his success would encourage 
them. What a sound must the following speech 
carry to some married ears ! 

' ' Think you a little din can daunt my ears ? 
Have I not in my time heard lions roar ? 
Have I not heard the sea, puff'd up with winds, 
Rage like an angry boar, chafed with sweat ? 
Have I not heard great ordnance in the field ? 
And heav'n's artillery thunder in the skies ? 
Have I not in a pitched battle heard 
Loud larums, neighing steeds, and trumpets clang ? 
And do you tell me of a woman's tongue, 
That gives not half so great a blow to hear, 
As will a chesnut in a farmer's fire ?" 

Not all Petruchio's rhetoric would persuade 
more than " some dozen followers" to be of this 
heretical way of thinking. He unfolds his 
scheme for the Taming of the Shrew , on a prin- 
ciple of contradiction, thus: — 

" I'll woo her with some spirit when she comes. 
Say that she rail, why then I'll tell her plain 
She sings as sweetly as a nightingale j 
Say that she frown, I'll say she looks as clear 
As morning roses newly wash'd with dew 5 
Say she be mute, and will not speak a word, 
Then I'll commend her volubility, 



314 THE TAMING OF THE SHREW. 

And say she uttereth piercing eloquence : 

If she do bid me pack, I'll give her thanks, 

As tho' she bid me stay by her a week 5 

If she deny to wed, I'll crave the day, 

When I shall ask the banns, and when be married r" 

He accordingly gains her consent to the match, 
by telling her father that he has got it ; disap- 
points her by not returning at the time he has 
promised to wed her, and when he returns, 
creates no small consternation by the oddity of 
his dress and equipage. This however is no- 
thing to the astonishment excited by his mad- 
brained behaviour at the marriage. Here is the 
account of it by an eye-witness: — 

<e Gremlo. Tut, she's a lamb, a dove, a fool to him : 
I'll tell you, Sir Lucentio j when the priest 
Should ask if Katherine should be his wife ? 
Ay, by gogs woons, quoth he 3 and swore so loud, 
That, all amaz'd, the priest let fall the book 3 
And as he stooped again to take it up, 
This mad-brain'd bridegroom took him such a cuff; 
That down fell priest and book, and book and priest. 
Now take them up, quoth he, if any list. 

Tran'io. What said the wench when he rose up again ? 

Gremio. Trembled and shook 3 for why, he stamp'd and 
swore, 
As if the vicar meant to cozen him. 
But after many ceremonies done, 
He calls for wine 5 a health, quoth he 3 as if 
He' ad been aboard carousing with his mates 
After a storm j quaft off the muscadel, 



THE TAMING OF THE SHREW. 315 

And threw the sops all in the sexton's face ; 

Having no other cause but that his beard 

Grew thin and hungerly, and seem'd to ask 

His sops as he was drinking. This done, he took 

The bride about the neck, and kiss'd her lips 

With such a clamourous smack, that at their parting 

All the church echoed : and I seeing tjiis, 

Came thence for very shame ; and after me, 

I know, the rout is coming j 

Such a mad marriage never was befpre." 

The most striking and at the same time laugh- 
able feature in the character of Petruchio through- 
out is the studied approximation to the intrac- 
table character of real madness, his apparent in- 
sensibility to all external considerations, and 
utter indifferepce to every thing but the wild 
and extravagant freaks of his own self will. 
There is no contending with a person on whom 
nothing makes any impression but his own pur- 
poses, and who is bent on his own whims just 
in proportion as they seem to want common 
sense. With him a thing's being plain and rea- 
sonable is a reason against it. The airs he gives 
himself are infinite, and his caprices as sudden 
as they are groundless. The whole of his treat- 
ment of his wife at home is in the same spirit of 
ironical attention and inverted gallantry. Every 
thing flies before his will, like a conjuror's wand, 
and he only metamorphoses his wife's temper 
by metamorphosing her senses and all the objects 



S16 THE TAMING OF THE SHREW. 

she sees, at a word's speaking. Such are his 
insisting that it is the moon and not the sun 
which they see, &c. This extravagance reaches 
its most pleasant and poetical height in the scene 
where, on their return to her father's, they meet 
old Vincentio, whom Petruchio immediately 
addresses as a young lady : — 

" Petruchio. Good morrow, gentle mistress, where 
away ? 
Tell me, sweet Kate, and tell me truly too, 
Hast thou beheld a fresher gentlewoman ? 
Such war of white and red within her cheeks j 
What stars do spangle heaven with such beauty, 
As those two eyes become that heav'nly face ? 
Fair lovely maid, once more good day to thee : 
Sweet Kate, embrace her for her beauty's sake. 

Hortensio. He'll make the man mad to make a woman 
of him. 

Katherine. Young budding virgin, fair and fresh and 
sweet, 
Whither away, or where is thy abode ? 
Happy the parents of so fair a child ; 
Happier the man whom favourable stars 
Allot thee for his lovely bed-fellow. 

Petruchio. Why, how now, Kate, I hope thou art not 
mad : 
This is a man, old, wrinkled, faded, wither'd, 
And not a maiden, as thou say'st he is. 

Katherine. Pardon, old father, my mistaken eyes 
That have been so bedazed with the sun 
That every thing I look on seemeth green. 
Now I perceive thou art a reverend father." 



THE TAMING OF THE SHREW. 317 

The whole is carried off with equal spirit, as 
if the poet's comic Muse had wings of fire. 
It is strange how one man could be so many 
things ; but so it is. The concluding scene, in 
which trial is made of the obedience of the new- 
married wives (so triumphantly for Petruchio) is 
a very happy one. — In some parts of this play 
there is a little too much about music-masters 
and masters of philosophy. They were things 
of greater rarity in those days than they are now. 
Nothing however can be better than the advice 
which Tranio gives his master for the prosecu- 
tion of his studies: — 

" The mathematics , and the metaphysics, 
Fall to them as you find your stomach serves you : 
No profit grows, where is no pleasure ta'en : 
In brief, sir, study what you most affect." 

We have heLfd the Honey -Moon called " art 
elegant Katherine and Petruchio." We suspect 
we do not understand this word elegant in the 
sense that many people do. But in our sense 
of the word, we should call Lucentio's descrip- 
tion of his mistress elegant. 

et Tranio, I saw her coral lips to move, 
And with her breath she did perfume the air : 
Sacred and sweet was all I saw in her." 

When Biondello tells the same Lucentio for his 
encouragement, " I knew a wench married in an 



318 THE TAMING OF THE SHREW. 

afternoon as she went to the garden for parsley 
to stuff a rabbit, and so may you, sir" — there is 
nothing elegant in this, and yet we hardly know 
which of the two passages is the best. 

The Taming of the Shrew is a play 
within a play. It is supposed to be a play acted 
for the benefit of Sly the tinker, who is made 
to believe himself a lord, when he wakes after a 
drunken brawl. The character of Sly and the 
remarks with which he accompanies the play 
are as good as the play itself. His answer when 
he is asked how he likes it, " Indifferent well ; 
'tis a good piece of work, would 'twere done," 
is in good keeping, as if he were thinking of his 
Saturday night's job. Sly does not change his 
tastes with his new situation, but in the midst 
of splendour and luxury still calls out lustily and 
repeatedly " for a pot o' the smallest ale." He 
is very slow in giving up his personal identity 
in his sudden advancement. — " I am Christo- 
phero Sly, call not me honour nor lordship. 
I ne'er drank sack in my life : and if you give 
me any conserves, give me conserves of beef: 
ne'er ask me what raiment I'll wear, for I have 
no more doublets than backs, no more stock- 
ings than legs, nor no more shoes than feet, 
nay, sometimes more feet than shoes, or such 
shoes as my toes look through the over-leather. 
— What, would you make me mad ? Am not 
I Christophero Sly, old Sly's son of Burton- 



THE TAMING OF THE SHREW. 319 

heath, by birth a pedlar, by education a card- 
maker, by transmutation a bear-herd, and now 
by present profession a tinker ? Ask Marian 
Hacket, the fat alewife of Wincot, if she know 
me not ; if she say I am not fourteen pence on 
the score for sheer ale, score me up for the ly- 
ing'st knave in Christendom." 

This is honest. " The Slies are no rogues," 
as he says of himself. We have a great predilec- 
tion for this representative of the fajnily; and 
what makes us like him the better is, that we 
take him to be of kin (not many degrees re- 
moved) to Sancho Panza. 



MEASURE EOR MEASURE. 



1 his is a play as full of genius as it is of wis- 
dom. Yet there is an original sin in the nature 
of the subject, which prevents us from taking 
a cordial interest in it. " The height of moral 
argument" which the author has maintained in 
the intervals of passion or blended with the more 
powerful impulses of nature, is hardly surpassed 
in any of his plays. But there is in general a 
want of passion ; the affections are at a stand ; 
our sympathies are repulsed and defeated in 
all directions. The only passion which influ- 
ences the story is that of Angelo; and yet he 
seems to have a much greater passion for hy- 
pocrisy than for his mistress. Neither are we 
greatly enamoured of Isabella's rigid chastity, 
though she could not act otherwise than she did. 
We do not feel the same confidence in the virtue 
that is " sublimely good" at another's expense. 



MEASURE FOR MEASURE. 321 

as if it had been put to some less disinterested 
triaL As to the Duke, who makes a very im- 
posing and mysterious stage-character, he is 
more absorbed in his own plots and gravity than 
anxious for the welfare of the state ; more tena- 
cious of his own character than attentive to the 
feelings and apprehensions of others. Claudio 
is the only person who feels naturally ; and yet 
he is placed in circumstances of distress which al- 
most preclude the wish for his deliverance. Ma- 
riana is also in love with Angelo, whom we hate. 
In this respect, there may be said to be a general 
system of cross-purposes between the feelings of 
the different characters and the sympathy of the 
reader or the audience. This principle of re- 
pugnance seems to have reached its height in 
the character of Master Barnardine, who not 
only sets at defiance the opinions of others, but 
has even thrown off all self-regard, — " one that 
apprehends death no more dreadfully but as a 
drunken sleep ; careless, reckless, and fearless 
of what's past, present, and to come." He is a 
fine antithesis to the morality and the hypo- 
crisy of the other characters of the play. Bar- 
nardine is Caliban transported from Prosperous 
wizard island to the forests of Bohemia or the 
prisons of Vienna. He is the creature of bad 
habits as Caliban is of gross instincts. He has 
however a strong notion of the natural fitness of 
things, according to his own sensations — u He 

Y 



322 MEASURE FOR MEASURE. 

has been drinking hard all night, and he will not 
be hanged that day" — and Shakespear has let 
him off at last. We do not understand why the 
philosophical German critic, Schlegel, should be 
so severe on those pleasant persons, Lucio, 
Pompey, and Master Froth, as to call them 
" wretches." They appear all mighty comfor- 
table' in their occupations, and determined to 
pursue them, " as the flesh and fortune should 
serve." A very good exposure of the want of 
self-knowledge and contempt for others, which 
is so common in the world, is put into the 
mouth of Abhorson, the jailor, when the Pro- 
vost proposes to associate Pompey with him in 
his office — " A bawd, sir ? Fie upon him, he 
will discredit our m'ystery." And the same an- 
swer would serve in nine instances out often to 
the same kind of remark, " Go to, sir, you weigh 
equally ; a feather will turn the scale." Shake- 
spear was in one sense the least moral of all 
writers ; for morality (commonly so called) is 
made up of antipathies ; and his talent consisted 
in sympathy with human nature, in all its shapes, 
degrees, depressions, and elevations. The ob- 
ject of the pedantic moralist is to find out the 
bad in every thing : his was to shew that " there 
is some soul of goodness in things evil." Even 
Master Bamardine is not left to the mercy of 
what others think of him ; but when he comes 
in, speaks for himself, and pleads his own cause, 



MEASURE FOR MEASURE. 3<23 

as well as if counsel had been assigned him. 
In one sense, Shakespear was no moralist at 
all: in another, he was the greatest of all moral- 
ists. He was a moralist in the same sense in 
which nature is one. He taught what he had 
learnt from her. He shewed the greatest know- 
ledge of humanity with the greatest fellow-feel- 
ing for it. 

One of the most dramatic passages in the pre- 
sent play is the interview between Claudio and 
his sister, when she comes to inform him of the 
conditions on which Angelo will spare his life. 

" Claudio. Let me know the point. 

Isabella. O, I do fear thee, Claudio : and I quake, 
Lest thou a feverous life should' st entertain, 
And six or seven winters more respect 
Than a perpetual honour. Dar'st thou die ? 
The sense of death is most in apprehension 5 
And the poor beetle, that we tread upon, 
In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great 
As when a giant dies. 

Claudio. Why give you me this shame ? 
Think you I can a resolution fetch 
From flowery tenderness ; if I must die, 
I will encounter darkness as a bride, 
And hug it in mine arms. 

Isabella. There spake my brother! there my father's 
grave 
Did utter forth a voice ! Yes, thou must die : 
Thou art too noble to conserve a life 
In base appliances. This outward-sainted deputy — 
Whose settled visage and deliberate word 



324 MEASURE FOR MEASURE, 

Nips youth i' the head, and follies doth emmew, 
As faulcon doth the fowl — is yet a devil. 

Claudio The princely Angelo ? 

Isabella. Oh, 'tis the cunning livery of hell, 
The damned'st body to invest and cover 
In princely guards ! Dost thou think, Claudio, 
If I would yield him my virginity, 
Thou might'st be freed ? 

Claudio. Oh, heavens ! it cannot be. 

Isabella. Yes, he would give it thee, for this rank of- 
fence, 
So to offend him still : this night's the time 
That I should do what I abhor to name, 
Or else thou dy'st to-morrow. 

Claudio. Thou shalt not do't. 

Isabella. Oh, were it but my life, 
I'd throw it down for your deliverance 
As frankly as a pin. 

Claudio. Thanks, dear Isabel. 

Isabella. Be ready, Claudio, for your death to-morrow 

Claudio. Yes. — Has he affections in him, 
That thus can make him bite the law by the nose ? 
When he would force it, sure it is no sin ; 
Or of the deadly seven it is the least. 

Isabella. Which is the least ? 

Claudio. If it were damnable, he, being so wise, 
Why would he for the momentary trick 
Be perdurably fin'd ? Oh, Isabel ! 

Isabella. What says my brother ? 

Claudio. Death is a fearful thing. 

Isabella. And shamed life a hateful. 

Claudio. Aye, but to die, and go we know not where ; 
To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot -, 
This sensible warm, motion to become 
A kneaded clod 5 and the delighted spirit 



MEASURE FOR MEASURE. 325 

To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside 

In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice j 

To be imprison'd in the viewless winds, 

And blown with restless violence round about 

The pendant world ; or to be worse than worst 

Of those, that lawless and incertain thoughts 

Imagine howling ! — 'tis too horrible ! 

The weariest and most loathed worldly life, 

That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment 

Can lay on nature, is a paradise 

To what we fear of death. 

Isabella. Alas ! alas ! 

Claudio. Sweet sister, let me live : 
What sin you do to save a brother's life. 
Nature dispenses with the deed so far, 
That it becomes a virtue." 

What adds to the dramatic beauty of this 
scene and the effect of Claudio's passionate at- 
tachment to life is, that it immediately follows 
the Duke's lecture to him, in the character of 
the Friar, recommending an absolute indifference 
to it. 

— " Reason thus with life, — • 
If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing, 
That none but fools would keep : a breath thou art, 
Servile to all the skyey influences 
That do this habitation, where thou keep'st, 
Hourly afflict : merely, thou art death's fool ; 
For him thou labourist by thy flight to shun, 
And yet run'st toward him still : thou art not noble ; 
For all the accommodations, that thou bear'st, 
Are nurs'd by baseness : thou art by no means valiant 3 
For thou dost fear the soft and tender fork 



326 MEASURE FOR MEASURE. 

Of a poor worm : thy best of rest is sleep, 

And that thou oft provok'st ; yet grossly fear'st 

Thy death, which is no more. Thou art not thyself ; 

For thou exist'st on many a thousand grains 

That issue out of dust : happy thou art not ; 

For what thou hast not, still thou striv'st to get 5 

And what thou hast, forget'st : thou art not certain 5 

For thy complexion shifts to strange effects, 

After the moon -, if thou art rich, thou art poor 5 

For, like an ass, whose back with ingots bows, 

Thou bear'st thy heavy riches but a journey, 

And death unloads thee : friend thou hast none -, 

For thy own bowels, which do call thee sire, 

The mere effusion of thy proper loins, 

Do curse the gout, serpigo, and the rheum, 

For ending thee no sooner : thou hast nor youth, nor age j 

But, as it were, an after- dinner's sleep, 

Dreaming on both : for all thy blessed youth 

Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms 

Of palsied eld ; and when thou art old, and rich, 

Thou hast neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty, 

To make thy riches pleasant. What's yet in this, 

That bears the name of life ? Yet in this life 

Lie hid more thousand deaths 5 yet death we fear. 

That makes these odds all even." 



THE 

MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR. 



I he Merry Wives of Windsor is no doubt 
a very amusing play, with a great deal of hu- 
mour, character, and nature in it: but we should 
have liked it much better, if any one else had 
been the hero of it, instead of Falstaff. We could 
have been contented if Shakespear had not been 
" commanded to shew the knight in love." Wits 
and philosophers, for the most part, do not shine 
in that character ; and Sir John himself, by no 
means, comes off with flying colours. Many 
people complain of the degradation and insults 
to which Don Quixote is so frequently exposed 
in his various adventures. But what are the 
unconscious indignities which he suffers, com- 
pared with the sensible mortifications which 
Falstaff is made to bring upon himself? What 
are the blows and buffettings which the Don re- 



328 THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR. 

ceives from the staves of the Yanguesian car- 
riers or from Sancho Panza's more hard-hearted 
hands, compared with the contamination of the 
buck-basket, the disguise of the fat woman of 
Brentford, and the horns of Heme the hunter, 
which are discovered on Sir John's head? In read- 
ing the play, we indeed wish him well through 
all these discomfitures, but it would have been 
as well if he had not got into them. Falstaffin 
the Merry Wives of Windsor is not the man 
he was in the two parts of Henry IV. His wit 
and eloquence have left him. Instead of making 
a butt of others, he is made a butt of by them. 
Neither is there a single particle of love in him 
to excuse his follies : he is merely a designing, 
bare-faced knave, and an unsuccessful one. The 
scene with Ford as Master Brook, and that with 
Simple, Slender's man, who comes to ask after 
the Wise Woman, are almost the only ones 
in which his old intellectual ascendancy ap- 
pears. He is like a person recalled to the stage 
to perform an unaccustomed and ungracious 
part ; and in which we perceive only " some 
faint sparks of those flashes of merriment, that 
were wont to set the hearers in a roar." But 
the single scene with Doll Tearsheet, or Mrs. 
Quickly's account of his desiring " to eat some 
of housewife Reach's prawns," and telling her 
" to be no more so familiarity with such peo- 
ple," is worth the whole of the Merry Wives 



THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR. 329 

of Windsor put together. Ford's jealousy, 
which is the main spring of the comic incidents, 
is certainly very well managed. Page, on the 
contrary, appears to be somewhat uxorious in 
his disposition ; and we have pretty plain indi- 
cations of the effect of the characters of the hus- 
bands on the different degrees of fidelity in their 
wives. Mrs. Quickly makes a very lively go- 
between, both between Falstaff and his Dulci- 
neas, and Anne Page and her lovers, and seems 
in the latter case so intent on her own interest 
as totally to overlook the intentions of her em- 
ployers. Her master, Doctor Caius, the French- 
man, and her fellow-servant Jack Bugby, are 
very completely described. This last-mentioned 
person is rather quaintly commended by Mrs. 
Quickly as " an honest, willing, kind fellow, as 
ever servant shall come in house withal, and I 
warrant you, no tell-tale, nor no breed-bate; 
his worst fault is that he is given to prayer ; he 
is something peevish that way ; but no body 
but has his fault." The Welch Parson, Sir 
Hugh Evans (a title which in those days was 
given to the clergy) is an excellent character in 
all respects. He is as respectable as he is laugh- 
able. He has " very good discretions, and very 
odd humours." The duel-scene with Caius 
gives him an opportunity to shew his " cholers 
and his tremblings of mind," his valour and his 
melancholy, in an irresistible manner. In the 



330 THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR. 

dialogue, which at his mother's request he holds 
with his pupil, William Page, to shew his pro- 
gress in learning, it is hard to say whether the 
simplicity of the master or the scholar is the 
greatest. Nym, Bardolph, and Pistol, are but 
the shadows of what they were; and Justice 
Shallow himself has little of his consequence 
left. But his cousin, Slender, makes up for the 
deficiency. He is a very potent piece of imbe- 
cility. In him the pretensions of the worthy 
Gloucestershire family are well kept up, and 
immortalised. He and his friend Sackerson and 
his book of songs and his love of Anne Page 
and his having nothing to say to her can never 
be forgotten. It is the only first-rate character 
in the play : but it is in that class. Shakespear 
is the only writer who was as great in describ- 
ing weakness as strength. 



THE COMEDY OF ERRORS, 



This comedy is taken very much from the 
Menaechmi of Plautus, and is not an improve- 
ment on it. Shakespear appears to have be- 
stowed no great pains on it, and there are but a 
few passages which bear the decided stamp of 
his genius. He seems to have relied on his 
author, and on the interest arising out of the 
intricacy of the plot. The curiosity excited is 
certainly very considerable, though not of the 
most pleasing kind. We are teazed as with a 
riddle, which notwithstanding we try to solve. 
In reading the play, from the sameness of the 
names of the two Antipholises and the two 
Dromios, as well from their being constantly 
taken for each other by those who see them, it 
is difficult, without a painful effort of attention, 
to keep the characters distinct in the mind. 
And again, on the stage, either the complete 



332 THE COMEDY OF ERRORS. 

similarity of their persons and dress must pro- 
duce the same perplexity whenever they first 
enter, or the identity of appearance which the 
story supposes, will be destroyed. We still, 
however, having a clue to the difficulty, can 
tell which is which, merely from the practical 
contradictions which arise, as soon as the dif- 
ferent parties begin to speak; and we are in- 
demnified for the perplexity and blunders into 
which we are thrown by seeing others thrown 
into greater and almost inextricable ones. — 
This play (among other considerations) leads us 
not to feel much regret that Shakespear was not 
what is called a classical scholar. We do not 
think his forte would ever have lain in imitat- 
ing or improving on what others invented, so 
much as in inventing for himself, and perfecting 
what he invented, — not perhaps by the omission 
of faults, but by the addition of the highest ex- 
cellencies. His own genius was strong enough 
to bear him up, and he soared longest and best 
on unborrowed plumes. — The only passage of 
a very Shakespearian cast in this comedy is the 
one in which the Abbess, with admirable cha- 
racteristic artifice, makes Adriana confess her 
own misconduct in driving her husband mad. 

(C Abbess. How long hath this possession held the man: 
Adriana. This week he hath been heavy, sour, sad., 
And much, much different from the man he was 3 



f HE COMEDY OF ERRORS. 333 

But, till this afternoon, his passion 
Ne'er brake into extremity of rage. 

Abbess. Hath he not lost much wealth by wreck at sea ? 
Bury'd some dear friend ? Hath not else his eye 
Stray'd his affection in unlawful love ? 
A sin prevailing much in youthful men, 
Who give their eyes the liberty of gazing. 
Which of these sorrows is he subject to 3 

Adriana. To none of these, except it be the last : 
Namely.) some love, that drew him oft from home. 

Abbess. You should for that have reprehended him. 

Adriana. Why, so I did. 

Abbess. But not rough enough. 

Adriana. As roughly as my modesty would let me. 

Abbess. Haply, in private. 

Adriana. And in assemblies too. 

Abbess. Aye, but not enough. 

Adriana. It was the copy of our conference : 
In bed, he slept not for my urging it ; 
At board, he fed not for my urging it ; 
Alone it was the subject of my theme? 
In company, I often glanc'd at it ; 
Still did I tell him it was vile and bad. 

Abbess. And therefore came it that the man was mad : 
The venom'd clamours of a jealous woman 
Poison more deadly than a mad dog's tooth. 
It seems, his sleeps were hinder'd by thy railing : 
And therefore comes it that his head is light. 
Thou say'st his meat was sauc'd with thy upbraidings : 
Unquiet meals make ill digestions, 
Therefore the raging fire of fever bred : 
And what's a fever but a fit of madness ? 
Thou say'st his sports were hinder'd by thy brawls : 
Sweet recreation barr'd, what doth ensue, 
But moody and dull melancholy, 



334 THE COMEDY OF ERRORS. 

Kinsman to grim and comfortless despair ; 
And, at her heels, a huge infectious troop 
Of pale distemperatures, and foes to life r 
In food, in sport, and life-preserving rest 
To be disturb'd, would mad or man or beast: 
The consequence is then, thy jealous fits 
Have scar'd thy husband from the use of wits. 

Luciana. She never reprehended him but mildly., 
When he demeaned himself rough, rude, and wildly.— 
"Why bear you these rebukes, and answer not r 

Adriana. She did betray me to my own reproof." 

Pinch the conjuror is also an excrescence not 
to be found in Plautus. He is indeed a very 
formidable anachronism. 

" They brought one Pinch, a hungry lean-fac'd villain, 
A meer anatomy, a mountebank, 
A thread-bare juggler and a fortune-teller, 
A needy, hollow-ey'd, sharp-looking wretch, 
A living dead man." 

This is exactly like some of the Puritanical por- 
traits to be met with in Hogarth. 



DOUBTFUL PLAYS 

OF 

SHAKESPEAR. 



Vv e shall give for the satisfaction of the reader 
what the celebrated German critic, Schlegel, says 
on this subject, and then add a very few remarks 
of our own. 

" All the editors, with the exception of Ca- 
pell, are unanimous in rejecting Titus Androni- 
cus as unworthy of Shakespear, though they 
always allow it to be printed with the other 
pieces, as the scape-goat, as it were, of their 
abusive criticism. The correct method in such 
an investigation is first to examine into the ex- 
ternal grounds, evidences, &c. and to weigh their 
worth ; and then to adduce the internal reasons 
derived from the quality of the work. The cri- 
tics of Shakespear follow a course directly the 
reverse of this ; they set out with a preconceived 
opinion against a piece, and seek, in justifi- 
cation of this opinion, to render the historical 



336 DOUBTFUL PLAYS. 

grounds suspicious, and to set them aside. Titus 
Andronicus is to be found in the first folio edition 
of Shakespear's works, which it was known was 
conducted by Heminge and Condell, for many 
years his friends and fellow-managers of the same 
theatre. Is it possible to persuade ourselves 
that they would not have known if a piece in 
their repertory did or did not actually belong to 
Shakespear ? And are we to lay to the charge 
of these honourable men a designed fraud in 
this single case, when we know that they did 
not shew themselves so very desirous of scraping 
every thing together which went by the name of 
Shakespear, but, as it appears, merely gave those 
plays of which they had manuscripts in hand ? 
Yet the following circumstance is still stronger: 
George Meres, a contemporary and admirer of 
Shakespear, mentions Titus Andronicus in an 
enumeration of his works, in the year 1598. 
Meres was personally acquainted with the poet, 
and so very intimately, that the latter read over 
to him his Sonnets before they w r ere printed. I 
cannot conceive that all the critical scepticism 
in the world would be sufficient to get over such 
a testimony. 

" This tragedy, it is true, is framed according 
to a false idea of the tragic, which by an accu- 
mulation of cruelties and enormities degenerates 
into the horrible, and yet leaves no deep im- 
pression behind : the story of Tereus and Philo- 



DOUBTFUL PLAYS. 337 

mela is heightened and overcharged under other 
names, and mixed up with the repast of Atreus 
and I hyestes, and many other incidents. In 
detail there is no want of beautiful lines, bold 
images, nay, even features which betray the pe- 
culiar conception of Shakespear. Among these 
we may reckon the joy of the treacherous Moor 
at the blackness and ugliness of his child begot 
in adultery; and in the compassion of Titus 
Andronicus, grown childish through grief, for a 
fly which had been struck dead, and his rage 
afterwards when he imagines he discovers in it 
his black enemy, we recognize the future poet 
of Lear. Are the critics afraid that Shakespear's 
fame would be injured, were it established that 
in his early youth he ushered into the world a 
feeble and immature work ? Was Rome the less 
the conqueror of the world because Remus could 
leap over its first walls ? Let any one place 
himself in Shakespear's situation at the com- 
mencement of his career. He found onlv a few 
indifferent models, and yet these met with the 
most favourable reception, because men are never 
difficult to please in the novelty of an art before 
their taste has become fastidious from choice 
and abundance. Must not this situation have 
had its influence on him before he learned to 
make higher demands on himself, and by dig- 
ging deeper in his own mind, discovered the 
richest veins of a noble metal? It is even highly 

z 



338 DOUBTFUL PLAYS. 

probable that he must have made several failures 
before getting into the right path. Genius is in 
a certain sense infallible, and has nothing to 
learn ; but art is to be learned, and must be ac- 
quired by practice and experience. In Shake- 
spear's acknowledged works we find hardly any 
traces of his apprenticeship, and yet an appren- 
ticeship he certainly had. This every artist 
must have, and especially in a period where he 
has not before him the example of a school al- 
ready formed. I consider it as extremely pro- 
bable, that Shakespear began to write for the 
theatre at a much earlier period than the one 
which is generally stated, namely, not till after 
the year 1590. It appears that, as early as the 
year 1584, when only twenty years of age, he 
had left his paternal home and repaired to Lon- 
don. Can we imagine that such an active head 
would remain idle for six whole years without 
making any attempt to emerge by his talents 
from an uncongenial situation ? That in the 
dedication of the poem of Venus and Adonis he 
calls it, " the first heir of his invention," proves 
nothing against the supposition. It was the 
first which he printed ; he might have composed 
it at an earlier period ; perhaps, also, he did not 
include theatrical labours, as they then possessed 
but little literary dignity. The earlier Shake- 
spear began to compose for the theatre, the less 
are we enabled to consider the immaturity and 



DOUBTFUL PLAYS. 339 

imperfection of a work as a proof of its spurious- 
ness in opposition to historical evidence, if we 
only find in it prominent features of his mind. 
Several of the works rejected as spurious, may 
still have been produced in the period betwixt 
Titus Andronicus, and the earliest of the ac- 
knowledged pieces. 

" At last, Steevens published seven pieces as- 
cribed to Shakespear in two supplementary vo- 
lumes. It is to be remarked, that they all ap- 
peared in print in Shakespear's life-time, with 
his name prefixed at full length. They are the 
following : — 

" 1. Locrine. The proofs of the genuineness 
of this piece are not altogether unambiguous ; 
the grounds for doubt, on the other hand, are 
entitled to attention. However, this question is 
immediately connected with that respecting Ti- 
tus Andronicus, and must be at the same time 
resolved in the affirmative or negative. 

" 2. Pericles, Prince of Tyre, This piece was 
acknowledged by Dryden, but as a youthful 
work of Shakespear. It is most undoubtedly 
his, and it has been admitted into several of the 
late editions. The supposed imperfections ori- 
ginate in the circumstance, that Shakespear here 
handled a childish and extravagant romance of 
the old poet Gower, and was unwilling to drag 
the subject out of its proper sphere. Hence he 
even introduces Gower himself, and makes him 



340 DOUBTFUL PLAYS. 

deliver a prologue entirely in his antiquated 
language and versification. This power of as- 
suming so foreign a manner is at least no proof 
of helplessness. 

" 3. The London Prodigal. If we are not 
mistaken, Lessing pronounced this piece to be 
Shakespear's, and wished to bring it on the 
German stage. 

" 4. The Puritan; or, the Widow of Watting 
Street. One of my literary friends, intimately 
acquainted with Shakespear, was of opinion that 
the poet must have wished to write a play for 
once in the style of Ben Jonson, and that in 
this way we must account for the difference be- 
tween the present piece and his usual manner. 
To follow out this idea however would lead to a 
very nice critical investigation. 

"5. Thomas, Lord Cromwell. 

"6. Sir John Oldcastle — First Part. 

" 7. A Yorkshire Tragedy. 

" The three last pieces are not only unques- 
tionably Shakespear's, but in my opinion they 
deserve to be classed among his best and ma- 
turest works. — Steevens admits at last, in some 
degree, that they are Shakespear's, as well as the 
others, excepting Locrine, but he speaks of all of 
them with great contempt, as quite worthless 
productions. This condemnatory sentence is 
not however in the slightest degree convincing, 
nor is it supported by critical acumen. I should 



DOUBTFUL PLAYS. 341 

like to see how such a critic would, of his own 
natural suggestion, have decided on Shakespear's 
acknowledged master-pieces, and what he would 
have thought of praising in them, had the public 
opinion not imposed on him the duty of admira- 
tion. Thomas, Lord Cromwell, and Sir John 
Oldcastle, are biographical dramas, and models 
in this species: the first is linked, from its sub- 
ject, to Henri/ the Eighth, and the second to 
Henry the Fifth. The second part of Oldcastle 
is wanting ; I know not whether a copy of the 
old edition has been discovered in England, or 
whether it is lost. The Yorkshire Tragedy is a 
tragedy in one act, a dramatised tale of murder: 
the tragical effect is overpowering, and it is ex- 
tremely important to see how poetically Shake- 
apear could handle such a subject. 

" There have been still farther ascribed to 
him : — 1st. The M err y Devil of Edmonton, a co- 
medy in one act, printed in Dodsley's old plays. 
This has certainly some appearances in its fa- 
vour. It contains a merry landlord, who bears 
a great similarity to the one in the Merry Wives 
of Windsor. However, at all events, though an 
ingenious, it is but a hasty sketch. 2d. The 
Accusation of Paris. 3d. The Birth of Merlin. 
4th. Edward the Third. 5th. The Fair Emma. 
6th. Mucedorus. 7th. Arden of Fever sham. I 
have never seen any of these, and cannot there- 
fore say any thing respecting them. From the 



342 DOUBTFUL PLAYS. 

passages cited, I am led to conjecture that the 
subject of Mucedorus is the popular story of Va- 
lentine and Orson ; a beautiful subject which 
Lope de Vega has also taken for a play. Arden of 
Feversham is said to be a tragedy on the story of 
a man, from whom the poet was descended by the 
mother's side. If the quality of the piece is not 
too directly at variance with this claim, the cir- 
cumstance would afford an additional probability 
in its favour. For such motives were not foreign 
to Shakespear : he treated Henry the Seventh, 
who bestowed lands on his forefathers for ser- 
vices performed by them, with a visible par- 
tiality. 

" Whoever takes from Shakespear a play early 
ascribed to him, and confessedly belonging to 
his time, is unquestionably bound to answer, 
with some degree of probability, this question: 
who has then written it ? Shakespear's compe- 
titors in the dramatic walk are pretty well known, 
and if those of them who have even acquired a 
considerable name, a Lilly, a Marlow, a Hey- 
wood, are still so very far below him, we can 
hardly imagine that the author of a work, which 
rises so high beyond theirs, would have remained 
unknown." — Lectures on Dramatic Literature, 
vol. ii. page 2o2. 

We agree to the truth of this last observation, 
but not to the justice of its application to some of 
the plays here mentioned. It is true that Shake- 



DOUBTFUL PLAYS. 343 

spear's best works are very superior to those of 
Marlow, or Heywood, but it is not true that the 
best of the doubtful plays above enumerated are 
superior or even equal to the best of theirs. 
The Yorkshire Tragedy, which Schlegel speaks 
of as an undoubted production of our author's, is 
much more in the manner of Heywood than of 
Shakespear. The effect is indeed overpowering, 
but the mode of producing it is by no means 
poetical. The praise which Schlegel gives to 
Thomas, Lord Cromwell, and to Sir John Old- 
castle, is altogether exaggerated. They are very 
indifferent compositions, which have not the 
slightest pretensions to rank with Henri/ V. or 
Henry VIII. We suspect that the German critic 
was not very well acquainted with the dramatic 
contemporaries of Shakespear, or aware of their 
general merits ; and that he accordingly mistakes 
a resemblance in style and manner for an equal 
degree of excellence. Shakespear differed from 
the other writers of his age not in the mode of 
treating his subjects, but in the grace and power 
which he displayed in them. The reason as- 
signed by a literary friend of SchlegePs for sup- 
posing The Puritan; or, the Widow of Watling 
Street, to be Shakespear's, viz. that it is in the 
style of Ben Jonson, that is to say, in a style 
just the reverse of his own, is not very satisfac- 
tory to a plain English understanding. Locrine, 
and The London Prodigal, if they were Shake- 



344 DOUBTFUL PLAYS. 

spear's at all, must have been among the sins of 
his youth. Arden of Fevers ham contains several 
striking passages, but the passion which they 
express is rather that of a sanguine temperament 
than of a lofty imagination ; and in this respect 
they approximate more nearly to the style of 
other writers of the time than to Shakespear's. 
Titus Andronicus is certainly as unlike Shake- 
spear's usual style as it is possible. It is an ac- 
cumulation of vulgar physical horrors, in which 
the power exercised by the poet bears no pro- 
portion to the repugnance excited by the subject. 
The character of Aaron the Moor is the only 
thing which shews any originality of concep- 
tion ; and the scene in which he expresses his 
joy " at the blackness and ugliness of his child 
begot in adultery," the only one worthy of Shake- 
spear. Even this is worthy of him only in the 
display of power, for it gives no pleasure. 
Shakespear managed these things differently. 
Nor do we think it a sufficient answer to say 
that this was an embryo or crude production of 
the author. In its kind it is full grown, and its 
features decided and overcharged. It is not like 
a first imperfect essay, but shews a confirmed 
habit, a systematic preference of violent effect 
to every thing else. There are occasional de- 
tached images of great beauty and delicacy, 
but these were not beyond the powers of other 
writers then living. The circumstance which 



DOUBTFUL PLAYS. S45 

inclines us to reject the external evidence in 
favour of this play being Shakespear's is, that the 
grammatical construction is constantly false and 
mixed up with vulgar abbreviations, a fault that 
never occurs in any of his genuine plays. A si- 
milar defect, and the halting measure of the verse 
are the chief objections to Pericles of Tyre, if 
we except the far-fetched and complicated ab- 
surdity of the story. The movement of the 
thoughts and passions has something in it not 
unlike Shakespear, and several of the descrip- 
tions are either the original hints of passages 
which Shakespear has ingrafted on his other 
plays, or are imitations of them by some co- 
temporary poet. The most memorable idea in 
it is in Marina's speech, where she compares 
the world to " a lasting storm, hurrying her from 
her friends." 



POEMS AND SONNETS. 



Our idolatry of Shakespear (not to say our ad- 
miration) ceases with his plays. In his other 
productions, he was a mere author, though not 
a common author. It was only by representing 
others, that he became himself. He could go out 
of himself, and express the soul of Cleopatra ; 
but in his own person, he appeared to be al- 
ways waiting for the prompter's cue. In expres- 
sing the thoughts of others, he seemed inspired; 
in expressing his own, he was a mechanic. The 
licence of an assumed character was necessary 
to restore his genius to the privileges of nature, 
and to give him courage to break through the 
tyranny of fashion, the trammels of custom. In 
his plays, he was " as broad and casing as the 
general air :" in his poems, on the contrary, he 
appears to be " cooped, and cabined in" by all 
the technicalities of art, by all the petty intrica- 



POEMS AND SONNETS. 347 

cies of thought and language, which poetry had 
learned from the controversial jargon of the 
schools, where words had been made a sub- 
stitute for things. There was, if we mistake 
not, something of modesty, and a painful sense 
of personal propriety at the bottom of this. 
Shakespear's imagination, by identifying itself 
with the strongest characters in the most try- 
ing circumstances, grappled at once with nature, 
and trampled the littleness of art under his feet: 
the rapid changes of situation, the wide range 
of the universe, gave him life and spirit, and 
afforded full scope to his genius ; but return- 
ed into his closet again, and having assumed 
the badge of his profession, he could only labour 
in his vocation, and conform himself to existing 
models. The thoughts, the passions, the words 
which the poet's pen, " glancing from heaven to 
earth, from earth to heaven/' lent to others, 
shook off the fetters of pedantry and affec- 
tation ; while his own thoughts and feelings, 
standing by themselves, were siezed upon as 
lawful prey, and tortured to death according to 
the established rules and practice of the day. In 
a word, we do not like Shakespear's poems, be- 
cause we like his plays : the one, in all their 
excellencies, are just the reverse of the other. 
It has been the fashion of late to cry up our 
author's poems, as equal to his plays: this is 
the desperate cant of modern criticism. We 



348 POEMS AND SONNETS. 

would ask, was there the slightest comparison 
between Shakespear, and either Chaucer or 
Spenser, as mere poets ? Not any. — The two 
poems of Venus and Adonis and of Tarquin and 
Lucrece appear to us like a couple of ice-houses. 
They are about as hard, as glittering, and as cold. 
The author seems all the time to be thinking of 
his verses, and not of his subject, — not of what 
his characters would feel, but of what he shall 
say ; and as it must happen in all such cases, 
he always puts into their mouths those things 
which they would be the last to think of, and 
which it shews the greatest ingenuity in him to 
find out. The whole is laboured, up-hill work. 
The poet is perpetually singling out the difficul- 
ties of the art to make an exhibition of his 
strength and skill in wrestling with them. He is 
making perpetual trials of them as if his mas- 
tery over them were doubted. The images, 
which are often striking, are generally applied to 
things which they are the least like; so that they 
do not blend with the poem, but seem stuck up- 
on it, like splendid patch-work, or remain quite 
distinct from it, like detached substances, painted 
and varnished over. A beautiful thought is sure 
to be lost in an endless commentary upon it. The 
speakers are like persons who have both leisure 
and inclination to make riddles on their own si- 
tuation, and to twist and turn every object or 
incident into acrostics and anagrams. Every 



POEMS AND SONNETS. 340 

thing is spun out into allegory; and a digression 
is always preferred to the main story. Senti- 
ment is built up upon plays of words ; the hero 
or heroine feels, not from the impulse of passion, 
but from the force of dialectics. There is besides 
a strange attempt to substitute the language of 
painting for that of poetry, to make us see their 
feelings in the faces of the persons ; and again, 
consistently with this, in the description of the 
picture in Tarquin and Lucrece, those circum- 
stances are chiefly insisted on, which it would be 
impossible to convey except by words. The in- 
vocation to Opportunity in the Tarquin and Lu- 
crece is full of thoughts and images, but at the 
same time it is over-loaded by them. The con- 
cluding stanza expresses all our objections to 
this kind of poetry : — 

c ' Oh ! idle words, servants to shallow fools ; 
Unprofitable sounds, weak arbitrators j 
Busy yourselves in skill-contending schools ; 
Debate when leisure serves with dull debaters 5 
To trembling clients be their mediators : 
For me I force not argument a straw, 
Since that my case is past all help of law." 

The description of the horse in Venus and 
Adonis has been particularly admired, and not 
without reason: — 

<c Round hoofd, short jointed, fetlocks shag and long, 
Broad breast, full eyes, small head and nostril wide, 
High crest, short ears, strait legs, and passing strong, 
Thin mane, thick tail, broad buttock, tender hide, 



350 POEMS AND SONNETS. 

Look what a horse, should have, he did not lack, 
Save a proud rider on so proud a back." 

Now this inventory of perfections shews great 
knowledge of the horse ; and is good matter-of- 
fact poetry. Let the reader but compare it with 
a speech in the Midsummer Night's Dreamwhere 
Theseus describes his hounds — 

<c And their heads are hung 
With ears that sweep away the morning dew" — 

and he will perceive at once what we mean by 
the difference between Shakespear's own poetry, 
and that of his plays. We prefer the Passionate 
Pilgrim very much to the Lover's Complaint. 
It has been doubted whether the latter poem is 
Shakespear's. 

Of the sonnets we do not well know what to 
say. The subject of them seems to be somewhat 
equivocal ; but many of them are highly beau- 
tiful in themselves, and interesting as they re- 
late to the state of the personal feelings of the 
author. The following are some of the most 
striking : — 

CONSTANCY. 

ee Let those who are in favour with their stars, 
Of public honour and proud titles boast, 
Whilst I, whom fortune of such triumph bars, 
Unlook'd for joy in that I honour most. 
Great princes' favourites their fair leaves spread. 
But as the marigold in the sun's eye 3 



POEMS AND SONNETS. 351 

And in themselves their pride lies buried, 

For at a frown they in their glory die. 

The painful warrior famous' d for fight, 

After a thousand victories once foil'd, 

Is from the book of honour razed quite, 

And all the rest forgot for which he toil'd : 
Then happy I, that love and am belov'd, 
Where I may not remove, nor be remov'd." 

LOVE'S CONSOLATION. 

" When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, 
I all alone beweep my out-cast state, 
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, 
And look upon myself, and curse my fate, 
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, 
Featur'd like him, like him with friends possess'd, 
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope, 
With what I most enjoy contented least: 
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, 
Haply I think on thee, — and then my state 
(Like to the lark at break of day arising 
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven's gate ; 
For thy sweet love remember'd, such wealth brings, 
That then I scorn to change my state with kings." 

NOVELTY. 

" My love is strengthen' d, though more weak in seeming; 
I love not less, though less the show appear : 
That love is merchandis'd, whose rich esteeming 
The owner's tongue doth publish every where. 
Our love was new, and then but in the spring, 
When I was wont to greet it with my lays : 
As Philomel in summer's front doth sing, 
And stops his pipe in growth of riper days : 
Not that the summer is less pleasant now 



352 POEMS AND SONNETS. 

Than when her mournful hymns did hush the night, 
But that wild music burdens every bough, 
And sweets grown common lose their dear delight. 
Therefore, like her, I sometime hold my tongue, 
Because I would not dull you with my song." 

LIFE'S DECAY. 

t( That time of year thou may'st in me behold 
When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang 
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, 
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang. 
In me thou seest the twilight of such day, 
As after sun-set fadeth in the west, 
Which by and by black night doth take away, 
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest. 
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire, 
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie, 
As the death -bed whereon it must expire, 
Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by. 
This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong, 
To love that well which thou must leave ere long." 

In all these, as well as in many others, there 
is a mild tone of sentiment, deep, mellow, and 
sustained, very different from the crudeness of 
his earlier poems. 



THE END. 



LONDON: PRINTED BY C. H. REYNELL, 
21, PICCADILLY.— 1817. 



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